Four Lives, Four Stories, One Dream
by 19whenlifegivesyoulemons60
Summary: "Haruka recognised the final nail in the coffin, just when it was too late and the end of a cold metal handcuff latched shut around her wrist." Eventual MelloxOC and MattxOC.
1. Prologue

A/N: A lot of this scene and dialogue is taken from a death note episode. I don't, in any way claim it as my own. Please review.

Prologue

As smoke bomb collided with the pavement near her, a young woman with a flashy haircut and a white fur coat, which was worth more than her monthly pay check, felt her heart beat skyrocket. She stumbled towards her bodyguard, a tall American woman named Lidner, who was by her side almost instantly and caught her as she tripped over the pointed heels on her unfamiliar boots. The flashing cameras and screaming fans were obscured by a blanket of thick, grey fog which was starting to aggravate her lungs and make her cough.

"Quick, this way! Are you alright?" Lidner spoke calmly, yet with clear authority, as she strode through the frightened, stampeding crowd, dragging the girl along side her. When her question was met with a woozy affirmative they hurried forward even faster towards the studio entrance, "We need to get you inside NHN _now!_" Lidner informed the scared young woman she had been assigned to protect.

A squealing of tires behind them brought them to a halt. The young woman could see the silhouette of a man on a motorbike, his face hidden by the helmet he wore. Lidner's face twitched in recognition when an angry voice rang to them out, "_Don't _do it! Take a look around! It's not safe for her here. Not even inside!" They hesitated, unsure of what to do. Lidner could see the sense in what he said. In unsure situations like these there was a lot that could go wrong, especially as they didn't know what the smoke bomb's purpose was. The voice called out again, "It's best just to get her away from here, right now! Miss Takada!" He addressed her for the first time, "Get on! _Now!_"

"It's okay, you'll be safe with him," Lidner decided as she pushed the wheezing girl forward, "Please, you have to go!" Her tone was cool and controlled, as always, but the urgency in her last words was unmistakable.

The girl didn't take much persuading. The smoke, which had been an irritation a minute ago, was now unbearable and she could do little more then choke as she walked away from her protector towards this stranger, who seemed to be the definition of dangerous with his dark, leather outfit, precarious motorbike and concealed face. She gritted her teeth as she clambered on behind him, her expensive skirt bunching up around her legs. Her arms were a vice around his waist and as they sped away from all sources of familiarity all Haruka Sato could think was, "What have you gotten yourself into, girl? They said this would be simple!"

A/N: Please review. Next chapter will be a lot longer and up within the next few days.


	2. Chocolate and Cigarettes

A/N – I don't own Death Note. This chapter was thrown in at absolutely the last minute, when I realised I didn't have anything to show the relationship between Matt and Mello, which is slightly important. Just to clarify, there is no romance between the two of them in my story. They have more of a brotherly relationship. I needed something of the two of them together before they split up to carry out the plan.

Chocolate and Cigarettes

The gloomy room was littered with ashtrays, full to the brim with smouldering ashes, and silver chocolate wrappers were scattered across the dark wood floor like a trashy version of a night sky. There was very little in the room, with the exception of a low wooden table, which was all but buried under piles of assorted notes, documents, blueprints and the luminous screens of several computers. A single light bulb hung down from the ceiling, throwing eerie shadows across the exhausted faces of the two young men, who sat around the table rifling through papers or tapping away the keypads at their fingertips. One had darkish-blond hair down to his shoulders and a wicked, red scar, which spanned half his face. The rest of his body was covered in black leather and it seemed to blend into the dark room around him. An ornate rosary hung was round his neck and seemed to be the only detail on the, slightly effeminate clothing he wore. The other was dressed curiously in a stripy, red and white shirt and a pair of orange, plastic swimming goggles. They were currently on top of his head holding back the floppy chestnut strands of hair, which were several months overdue for a trim.

"Matt, let's go over the plan again. Just to be sure," Mello's tried to keep his voice devoid of emotion, but his best friend could see how tense he was. He hadn't slept in days and he was hunched over, working like a man possessed. Sometimes, when he thought he wasn't paying attention, Matt caught a glimpse of him gripping his rosary between his fingers and moving his lips in frenzied prayer. Mello's faith had always been something he'd kept private, he _never_ acted like this. That was what first tipped Matt of that something was wrong. Next, was when the leather clad man-diva (as Matt liked to call him, privately) started letting the standards of his, usually flawless, appearance fall. While, anyone else would have put it down to low self-esteem about his newly ravaged face, Matt knew him better. This wasn't like him. The immaculate hair become ragged and listless without attention and fingernails were cracked and dirty. When the goggled computer whizz had cracked a feeble joke at his new behaviour, in an attempt to lighten his friends pensive mood, the only response was "Well, I guess it doesn't really matter now," accompanied by a dark chuckle. It turned to a grimace, when the pain of the laughter caused the raw skin of his face to sear in pain.

However, the stress of the past few days had been getting to then both. The chocolate and cigarette consumption was through the roof as the two men were under increasing pressure to form a foolproof plan to bring Kira to his knees.

"Yeah, sure…uhuh," Matt muttered around his fresh cigarette. "I mean, it's not like we've not been over it a thousand and four times, since yesterday afternoon." This earned him an irate scowl, which would have frozen a lesser man's blood, as Mello came dangerously close to throwing something heavy at his chain-smoking accomplice. "Fine, fine!" Matt agreed, raising his striped arms in surrender, "We'll go over the plan again, okay?" He began reciting the words he'd memorised, while visualising what he would do, "I park at the corner of the street by NHN studio's main entrance tomorrow at exactly 6.45 pm." He started off, "When Kiyomi Takada gets out of her big, shiny limo; I'll make my big entrance, burst in, "guns blazing" and start a stampede of blinded, squealing fans." His mouth twitched in appreciation of the humorous mental image, "Then, I get myself out of there like the devils snapping at my feet…well…tires, I guess. Ditch the car and meet you back here at 4 am." He summarised the plan that they had been awake for more than forty hours conjuring up. "It just sucks," he thought, mutinously, "for a guy with my talents to be asked to go in there and shoot the place up! There's nothing for me to hack or hotwire or blow up. Life's so unfair!"

Mello sensed his cue, and interjected before Matt could start griping about the lack of computer related destruction, "Meanwhile, Takada will, most likely, be trying to get into NHN through the back entrance. I'll cut them off and convince them that the area is too dangerous for such a high profile person. If Halle Lidner's with her, which I'm pretty sure she will be, It wont be to difficult-"

Matt cut him off as he mashed the remainder of his cigarette into the ashtray. "You really think it'll be that simple?" He lit another and continued talking, critically, around it. "This international superstar newscaster/spokeswoman's secret police bodyguard is just gonna hand her over like a box of chocolates. No offence, Mello, but I don't think it's gonna be that easy. Just a hunch."

Mello recalled his first meeting with Lidner, several years back, before he'd become a highly illegal mafia boss. She'd been working under him on a brutal murder case and they had bonded. Despite several angry clashes, due to disagreements on pretty much everything, when they parted, they had achieved, if not friendship, at least a mutual respect for one another. She'd trusted him then, and then later, she'd trusted him enough to share secret SPK information with her, and she'd trust him again now, he was ninety-nine percent certain. "Don't you worry about that, my friend. Didn't you know? Miss Lidner and I go way, way back. We're old pals. I wouldn't be surprised if she hands Takada over the second she hears my voice. And besides, if things go badly…" He trailed of as he gestured to the pistols by the door. As he waved his arm, yet another chocolate wrapper fell from his hands to the floor for someone else to take care of. He felt bad for betraying Lidner like this, but, if this plan could help him beat Near and end Kira's reign, then there was nothing he wouldn't sacrifice. "Anyway, when the girl's securely on the back of my bike, I lose her bodyguards and take her to the shipping truck we've got about five miles east of NHN, search her for tracers and wires, and away we go."

"Away we go," Matt echoed his friend's words. He steeled himself to voice the thoughts that had been tumbling round his head since he first noticed his companion's odd behaviour. "Mello, I've stuck with you through real bad times and, you know, we always make it work out, in the end," he ducked his head and cleared his throat, not used to talking so poignantly, "I trust you like you're my own family and I'll stick with you and with the plan, no matter what you say but, recently, you've been acting…weird. I can't help but wonder, is it because you don't think we're going to make it this time?"

Mello was silent for a very long time; the first moment of real quiet they'd had in days. Finally, he spoke, "Matt, let's go over the plan again. Just to be sure."

A/N – Please review


	3. Want to be Famous for a Day?

_A/N - I don't own death note. But you knew that already._

_This chapter is giving some back story, explaining the results leading up to the prologue and why someone other than Takada was on the bike. My first few chapters are going to be like this, explaining backstory and introducing my OCs. I'll try and work some action in there, too. If it's getting boring please tell me in a review, it will help me to know how to order my chapters as this Fanfic will be chopping between Matt and Mello's situations. Also, I'm a bit depressed about the response (or lack, thereof) to my story so far. I'm going to have a go at changing the summary but, if nobody even reads this, I may give up. If just one person reviews it would make my day. Please enjoy and review._

Want to be Famous for a Day?

"I must inform you, as her bodyguard," droned the rehearsed voice of the police officer on the other end of the phone, "that, although Miss Takada's stalker has been apprehended, there is a small chance that he could be working with others, who may still be a threat to her safety. In these kinds of circumstances, it is standard police procedure to advise your employer that it would be in her best interests to lay low for a couple of days."

Tired and frustrated, SPK member Halle Lidner struggled with her desire to inform the junior sounding member of the Japanese police that she had dealt with more stalking cases than she cared to recall during her time in the LAPD, over the past ten years and was well aware of standard police procedure. However, her strict sense of professionalism won through and turned to relay this information to her "assignment."

NHN announcer, and Kira's representative, Miss Kiyomi Takada was curled up in an squashy armchair, her usually calm, sophisticated demeanour replaced with a frazzled look as she ran her hands through her, now butchered, hair. And who could blame her? Waking up in the middle of the night to discover that a love-struck fan club member had scaled the drainpipe to her window (Which was on the seventeenth floor of her apartment building) with a pair of scissors and was attempting to hack off a lock of her hair to keep next to his heart would come as a shock to anyone, and even though the situation had been quickly resolved when Lidner, alerted by Takada's ear-splitting screech, burst in with a loaded gun and swiftly incapacitated the intruder, she was left feeling a little more than slightly disconcerted.

"But I can't!" Takada responded to this information, "That's completely out of the question, I-I have commitments, I promised to appear at a business function at the studio this eveni-." She paused, if the stalker from last night wasn't the only person after her, the dinner party, which NHN was throwing to boost its status and make new contacts, would be the perfect place to approach her. It wouldn't be too hard to sneak in and, besides, the next crazed fan could try something a lot more dangerous than cutting her hair. Perhaps a public appearance, so soon, was a bad move. Even so, she had made a promise…

Her bodyguard seemed to be thinking along the same lines. Lidner leaned back in her armchair and put forward a daring suggestion, "The public will be able to last without you for a couple of days while this mess is sorted out, and as for the dinner party, at NHN, all you'd have had to do is smile and nod. I'm sure the police could arrange for one of their officers to go disguised as you and no-one would even notice it was a different girl. It can't be that hard to wonder around and bow to important people, and I'm fairly sure your entourage would have the time of their lives trying to recreate your face on a strange girl. It could serve the double purpose of making sure you're there, well, sort of, and drawing out any other people, who might be threat to you, Miss Takada. What do you think?

Although she was slightly put out by the idea that a bland, unremarkable police officer could pass for and icon like her, Kira's spokesperson, a woman whose face was known across the world, Takada grudgingly conceded. After all, with all the hard work spreading Light's word through the media, not to mention corresponding with Mikami and maintaining her social life, she was sure no-one would grudge her a few days break. "I haven't been to a spa in months," she pondered, before picking up her cell to call her favourite resort in Kawasaki

As Takada set about planning her brief holiday, for the next few days, and considering possible ways to save her precious haircut, another police officer, who had a deep, booming voice and had a few more years experience with criminals than the first man, was being quickly informed what he was going to do next by a force to be reckoned with; a tired and frustrated former secret service agent, who had gone nearly forty hours without a caffeinated drink.

***

"Of course, I understand ma'am," Detective Nakagawa argued, wiping a hand across his sweaty, balding scalp. He was slightly annoyed that this "Lidner," a strange American bodyguard, was bossing him around like a Sergeant Major and telling him how to run his case, no matter how good her idea was. "But there is the problem of the girl to impersonate Miss Takada. We do have one female police officer on our team but she is sixty-three years old and has just had a hip replacement, no way we could send her, and we couldn't get someone else on such short notice…" his voice trailed off as his eyes fell on the police secretary, who had just walked purposefully into the room. It was like a light bulb had pinged on above his head. She had the same petite build as Kiyomi Takada, same kind of hair too. At nineteen she was a good five years younger than the news anchor but from a distance they could have been confused for sisters.

Although, she was a relatively new employee Nakagawa knew three crucial things about her: Firstly, she had aspirations to become a police officer in the near future. This meant she would be eager to do proper police work. Making coffee all day couldn't be much fun, he was sure. Secondly, she lived alone and had virtually no family. This meant she didn't have a lot to lose, so slightly dangerous work was a possible option. Finally, this girl kept herself to herself. She had few friends and no boyfriend. This would be an advantage, because, if something unfortunate were to happen to her, there wasn't likely to be anyone to kick up a fuss. The cogs started turning in his brain. Maybe it wasn't totally ethical to send an untrained girl into an undercover operation, but everyone knew that Kiyomi Takada was close to Kira and _he_ was someone, who it would be in the detective's best interests, to keep happy.

Looking riled and aggravated, the girl nearly split the coffee mug that Detective Nakagawa's wife had given him for their thirtieth anniversary, in half by banging it onto his desk. He looked, with a grimace, at the brown sludge, which was sloshing around inside. "The coffee machine broke," she announced in an aggressive voice, as if daring him to insult her swampy creation, "So I made this myself."

"Um, yes," the Detective responded distractedly as the looked his employee up and down. Then, feeling as though he were about to stomp through a mine field but compelled by curteousy and desire to get a feel of whether she would be up for the task, he looked up at her and, in a fatherly tone of voice, asked if anything was the matter.

The girl took a breath and struggled to mentally extinguish her fury. This wasn't her boss's fault and she didn't want to get fired from another job for a temper explosion, especially not one at one of the leading police departments in the Kanto region. "I apologise Sir," She said, "No, everything is not really alright. I just got my sixth letter of rejection from Kanto Police Academy because of my, "lack of experience," then I couldn't find my inhaler as I was leaving for work and, to top it off, I think I just broke my toe kicking the coffee machine! It's just been a really bad day, that's all."

"Oh dear. I'm sorry to hear that, maybe next term they'll have a place for you," Nakagawa murmured comfortingly while forming a plan in his head. He needed a actress to save his skin from the wrath of Kira's spokeswoman. This girl needed experience with the police to achieve her dream. It couldn't have been more perfect. She wasn't really trained for any kind of police work but surely, a simple job like this. Nobody could object. What could go wrong?

Detective Nakagawa made up his mind as the girl bowed and turned to leave the room, "Wait, Haruka! I might have a job for you! Perhaps you'd be interested…


	4. Second Chances

A/N – I don't own death note.

Just a tiny bit more back story but I promise the next one is long and exciting. It's a Matt chap, so keep reading and reviewing. This chapter is introducing my first OC!

Haruka Sato

Haruka Sato stood on the train to NHN, jammed between a slightly hefty man, who was sweating profusely, and an old woman with incredibly spiky elbows and a personal space issue, while clutching onto a railing to prevent herself falling headlong down the carriage. On any other day, this would have been infuriating, but today nothing could bother her. The opportunity she had been praying for, ever since she had received that first, crushing rejection, had been presented to her on a silver platter. Finally, a chance to prove herself to Kanto Police Academy, become a cop and get the justice for the crime which had torn her family to shreds. If impersonating Kiyomi Takada, to lure out stalkers, was what it took, then that's what she would do.

Every term she applied to the police academy to get the required training for her to achieve her goal, and every term she received the same reply: "We are unable to consider your application at this time due to your lack of experience…please feel free to reapply next term." Of course, it was only an excuse. She had more experience than some qualified police officers but the academy would never accept a student like her.

Haruka had soared through her exams and completed three months work experience at a police station in Tokyo. After her first letter of application she'd even been invited in for an interview. If she had impressed them that much on her first chance, what was different now? Why was she not worth a second chance? There was another reason the people in charge kept rejecting her from school. The sad thing was that she had no-one to blame but herself.

_An eighteen year old Haruka was a whirling mess as she circled her kitchen, stuffing things into her __handbag. Purse? Check. House keys? Check. Phone? Check. An irritating itching in her mind told her that she needed something else, something very important. _

"_Of all the days you could have picked be quiet!" __the angry girl cursed at her alarm clock, which had today decided that it was not going to shatter her eardrums with some tediously cheerful song at six in the morning and left her racing against time to be ready and out the door. She racked her aching brain for a moment and sighed. Whatever she had forgotten would have to wait. If she missed her train, then she missed her interview, and then she missed entry into the Kanto Police Academy, which was the target she'd been aiming for ever since she could remember._

_Haruka grinned, remembering the time she'd fake-arrested her older brother when she was nine and had caught him stealing sweets from the jar on the kitchen counter. Then she sobered, she didn't want to think about her family, not today, she needed to get out that door! This was an opportunity she couldn't afford to throw away. Practically flying out of her apartment, she ran right past the little white bag on the table with a red cross and the words _Medical Emergency_ scrawled across the material._

_After arriving just before her name was called, __Haruka breezed through the intense interview and the podgy, balding man, who was asking the questions, was stunned by the passion and knowledge that she demonstrated. In his mind, there was no doubt, this girl would certainly be joining them at the academy in the following months and she would do exceptionally well. Everything about her said, "I am going to the top!"_

_They shook hands after a half hour of talking and Haruka turned to the door feeling satisfied when the interviewer called out to her._

"_Oh Miss, before you go, I forgot to tell you, you have to go to room 303 next for the finale part of the process." _

_Haruka turned back confused, __"Um…excuse me, Sir, what final part? I thought I had finished the interview."_

"_Not quite yet," he replied, surprised, "I thought you knew, the academy insists on all its students being in good shape. It'll just be some routine fitness tests, you kno__w, strength, stamina…nothing too difficult. Um…Miss are you alright?"_

"_Fine, thank you. Goodbye." Haruka's face had turned chalky and she gritted her teeth. _

_Here was the event she hadn't even considered. She'd had these kinds of fitness tests in high school and they always ended in the same way; her lying on her back in the nurses office gasping like a fish out of water, or clutching an oxygen mask to her face a her lungs cried out for air in a crowded ER. "Calm down", she thought to herself, "things haven't been so bad since you got an inhaler, you'll be fine, you'll b-," her reassurance was brought to an abrupt end by the images in her head: Her getting up that morning, running around the apartment looking for her things, running out the door…and the inhaler, in its bag, on the table, in her apartment. It was still there!_

Haruka sighed; remembering all of that was like having a bucket of cold water dumped over her head; the last thing she wanted to do was make the pain worse by reliving what had happened next. Suffice it to say that she had ended up being driven to the emergency room by the academy sports coach and received an excruciating lecture from him, later, in the hospital.

"_I just __don't get it. Why didn't you just say you were asthmatic? We could have made other arrangements. It was extremely stupid of you to go ahead with the physical with no regard to your health. The fact that you endangered yourself by withholding important information like this is bad enough but the fact that you forgot your inhaler in the first place shows a very irresponsible attitude. You must realise that I can't possibly recommend you for a place at the academy now…"_

The ranting had gone on and Haruka hadn't been able to find the strength to do anything but hold the oxygen mask over her mouth, as the sneering coach looked at her pityingly. The excuses she could have made, any attempts to defend herself were left unsaid and she felt a pain in her chest that had nothing to do with the asthma attack, which had been triggered by the intense workout. The acid on the paper cut had come the next day with the rejection letter. "We are unable to consider your application at this time due to your lack of experience…please feel free to reapply next term."

Haruka knew why she had failed. It wasn't because of her lack of experience. It wasn't even because she had forgotten her inhaler or tried the physical anyway, stupid as it had been. The coach had been angry about that, but it was well known, by Kanto Police Academy applicants, that he was a man, who saw it as his duty to make sure that any students, who he deemed unsatisfactory, could never become police officers, and now that he had seen her crumple like a piece of paper and fail so miserably, he couldn't let her become a public protector. After all, if she couldn't run a mile or do a hundred star jumps, how could she be expected to fight the bad guys? In his eyes, her asthma made her a weak link and he would pull any string he could to keep her out of the chain, permanently.

At the time, the rejection felt like the end of the world. Haruka had let herself down and even worse she had let _him_ down. However, after weeks of lying at home, feeling sorry for herself, she clambered out of her pit of depression and got back on track. She hadn't failed, she'd stumbled on the track but she had the whole rest of the race to make it up. All she'd ever wanted was to be a police officer. To bring the hand of justice down on the murderers of the world, especially, Kira, who's killings had cut her deeper than any asthma attack or rejection letter.

Firstly, Haruka took a few jobs associated with policing, even ones as menial as making tea for qualified officers. If she could stick with these, the academy would no longer be able to use the, "no experience," excuse to keep her away. However, the rejections kept on coming, when she complained she was told that her work so far didn't count as experience because she wasn't dealing with criminals. Furthermore, her constant battle had hardened her, made her bitterer than she had been. She always lost her job within weeks of he first day, due to some angry outburst or scathing remark she'd let out. Finally, she landed a secretarial job at a police station in Kanto, hoping to use the work there as, "police experience".

Haruka had all but given up her life's goal when her prayers were answered. Here was a chance. All she had to do was spend an afternoon undercover, posing as a Kira's spokesperson Kiyomi Takada to try and help catch the stalkers, who followed the news reader like adoring puppies.

Takada was one of the most important women in the country, everyone knew that. With anything associated with a person _that _influential stuck on her CV, Kanto Police Academy wouldn't be able to turn her away…or even want to. Whatever, arguments the sports coach made would fall on deaf ears.

Tears started to glimmer in Haruka's eyes as a the memory of an ever present face pushed it's way to the front of her thoughts, but then a sad smile broke out before turning into a full blown grin. Next she felt laughter bubbling up inside her for the first time in a long time. This earned her some weird glances from sweaty-man and spiky-elbow-woman, which she ignored.

"No tears," Haruka told herself, firmly, "This is something to be glad about! If this afternoon goes well, I'll be one step closer to catching Taichi's murderer. Kira will pay."


	5. Hero

A/N: Some of this scene and dialogue was taken from a death note episode. It's not mine. Thank you to my reviewers so far.

Hero

A striking man in a stripy shirt and orange tinted goggles swerved out of the car park as fast as he could push the engine of his car, clenching his jaw around the fresh cigarette in his mouth and throwing the firearm from which he'd let fly a smoke bomb, moments before, into the back seat of his getaway car. He was hoping to escape in the cover of the billowing grey cloud, which was rapidly enfulging everything in a fifty metre radius.

Matt had always been the man behind the screen, hacking, rewiring and observing from a distance. High speed car chases and adrenaline pumping situations were hardly his thing, unless he was separated from them by the screen of his gameboy.

Matt vaguely wondered whether Mello had Takada with him yet. He'd never met Lidner, personally, but his closest friend always spoke of her with a kind of grudging respect, so he could only assume that she was smarter than the average cop, would she be so quick to give her charge into Mello's manipulative hands? He brushed his fears aside as he turned a corner. She might be smart but Mello was one of L's successors for a reason. He would succeed. No question.

Tires screeching, Matt flew round the corner, twisting and turning to escape the multiple cars on his tail. If he could just find a place to ditch the car, it would be a piece of cake to give his conspicuous image a few quick alterations and lose himself in the crowds of people on the busy streets. He'd be gone before anyone-

"Crap!" Matt exclaimed.

A wide blockade of at least eleven cars had gone out ahead of Matt and cut him off. They formed a barrier of shiny black metal, inside which he could see several big, angry men. "How many bodyguards does one woman need?" He mumbled to himself before turning to the slightly more urgent matter at hand, namely, how to get out of this situation outside a body bag. His analytical brain quickly processed the three options he had while he almost inhaled his cigarette trying to increase his thinking power with nicotine:

Stop the car and give himself up to the police. This might buy him some time but would lead to some seriously complex future problems. Being arrested was fairly low on his agenda and besides, he thought to himself, in Kira's world, getting in trouble with the police _really_ wasn't a wise idea. Of course there was always the small chance that Takada's ridiculous amount of body guards would pump him full of bullets. So, that ruled out option number one.

Try to barge through the thick wall of shiny black cars, come out the other side unscathed and continue with Plan A. In Mello's own words, "Lose 'em and get back to base" Short. Simple. Sweet. But extremely stupid. He was vaguely reminded of a scene from the second Toy Story movie, where Buzz uses the head of the thick-skulled dinosaur to break down an air vent to help Woody. It was _dumb_ and Matt didn't do dumb! Maybe he was never a serious contender for L's position as the greatest detective in the world, but he could come up with a better idea than that. Not to mention the tiny risk that he would completely wreck his car and die in a fiery collision. It wasn't a subject he thought about very often, but Matt always knew he wanted to die doing something amazingly important. It would be talked about globally and people would always remember his heroic end. This had been his dream since his first day at Whammy's house, the orphanage where he grew up. No. This option number two was never even an option; after all, he still had his promise to fulfil.

_The kind__ wrinkled face of Quillish Wammy or Watari, as he was known, looked down into the dark, intelligent eyes of six year old Mail Jeevas, which were partially obscured by his floppy mane of hair, which gave him the appearance of an old English sheepdog. He was wearing a hand-knitted stripy top, which was so big on him it hung to past his knees, and was clutching a small pair of orange swimming goggles in one hand. They were the one thing that no-one had been able to persuade him to part with, even for a moment. He bit his lip and tried not to let his nerves show or the tears make it past his eyes as he walked through the grand corridors of this strange house. If his Mom had known that he was going to such a nice house, she would have made him comb his hair and wear his church clothes, like when they'd visited Grandma, before her death, earlier in the year._

"_Here at Whammy's," __Watari informed the child gently, "you will have to go by a new name, you'll have a fresh start. It's for your own protection, of course. Do you know what you want to be called, young man?"_

_Mail responded to the old man's query wi__th one of his own, "Where's my Mommy? I want her!" He was dangerously close to bursting into frantic tears. _

_Watari paused before kneeling down to the boy's level__ and resting a hand on his shoulder. "We talked about this at the hospital, Mail. When the drunk driver ran into your car your Mother's head was hurt and now she's in a coma, do you understand what that means?" _

_Mail bobbed his head in response, "She's sleeping__… but she'll wake up soon, right? She's gotta wake up for Saturday. We're going swimming, that's why we went to the store," he waved the goggles in his hand, "to get some new swimming goggles." he informed the older gentleman, his young face brave and determined as he talked about his mom. Then his expression darkened, "but on our way home that guy hit our car. He made my mommy sick. I wish he was dead!" He shouted the last bit, all fear gone from his voice._

_Watari desperately w__anted to say to the boy that his mother would be awake by Saturday but he knew that nothing could be crueller than raising his expectations. _

"_I have something important to say to you, Mail. Your mom is being looked after by the best doctors in the States but__ even they don't know when she's going to wake up. It could be tomorrow but it could be never." He continued talking, even though the first trails of water were beginning to trickle down the little boy's face. "But while she's asleep I would like for you to live here in England, in Wammy's house with me and my family because I think you're special. Your teacher said that you have the most incredible technology skills she's ever seen in a person so young. Here, we want to teach you to use those skills to catch bad people, like the driver, who hit you and you're mother. What do you think, young man?"_

_Mail's tear stained face became __anxious again, "I-I don't know…my mom needs me there when she wakes up. I-I…"_

"_We could make you a champion, Mail. You could be like…like this boy here!" He found inspiration in a picture of a young man with dark hair on the wall. "He was one of our finest boys." He told Mail with pride in his voice, "he saved thousands of lives by deactivating bombs. Perhaps you saw him name on the news a few years ago. He was, tragically, killed when one of his jobs went badly wrong. He threw himself over the bomb right before it exploded, so he was the only person killed. A lot of people were saved that day." Watari's eyes closed remembering the serious faced boy, who he had first found twenty-five years ago, shivering in a gutter after running away from a terrible home. He had been one of the first Wammy children and, although, he hadn't been the only one who'd died in the line of duty; his passing had affected the old man the most. "You could be a hero just like him, one day, saving good people, catching bad ones. Think about it Mail!" Seeing the young boy nearly convinced, Quillish Wammy used his final, most manipulative weapon, "If you joined us, I think your mother would be very proud."_

_Matt stared up at the picture for a moment as though seeing the sunlight for the first time. Then he turned back to Watari's expectant smile. His childish voice asked his final question, "What was his name Mr. Watari? The boy in the picture,"_

"_We always called him M, but I don't think my telling you matters now. His real name was Matt. __Matt Sawyer."_

_The d__etermined look in the boys face seemed so out of place in a young child that the elderly man nearly chuckled, "Then Matt is my new name, Mr. Whammy. You can teach my anything and I'll work real hard." Inside his head he made a promise that would guide his life from there. "One day I'll be a brave hero, like Matt, Mom and you'll be proud of me, I swear it!"_

Option three was a crazy one. More dangerous than one or two and unlike anything Matt had ever done, outside his gameboy. One false move and he was dead, but get it right and the whole plan would snap back into place. This way he could feel like he'd tried, and if he died, no-one could say he'd just sat back and let it happen.

"Don't worry, Mom. I'll still be a hero." Matt smirked as he reached back to pick up the all-important smoke gun. "I've got it all under control all under control!"

Matt pulled the trigger.


	6. Who Are You?

A/N - I don't own Death Note. Some of this scene and dialogue is taken from a death note episode. Thank you for reading and enjoy the new chapter!

Last time:

"_Don't do it! Take a look around! It's not safe for her here. Not even inside!" They hesitated, unsure of what to do. "It's best just to get her away from her right now! Miss Takada!" He addressed her for the first time, "Get on! Now!"_

"_It's okay, you'll be safe with him," Lidner decided as she pushed the girl forward, "Please, you have to go!" Her tone was cool and controlled as always but the urgency in her last words was unmistakable._

_She didn't take much persuading. The smoke, which had been an irritation a minute ago, was now unbearable and she could do little more then wheeze as she walked away from her protector towards this stranger on a bike. She gritted her teeth as she climbed on behind him, her skirt bunching up around her legs, "Right!" As they drove away from all sources of familiarity all Haruka Sato could think was, "What have you gotten yourself into girl? And they said it would be an easy job!"_

Who Are You?

Haruka looked back over her shoulder and saw Lidner, who was fast becoming a person-shaped splodge in the distance, barking commands into a radio, concealed in her watch. Almost immediately, three of the black cars, which had been escorting her everywhere, come up behind the terrifying, speeding motorbike. The thought that she would soon be safely in the back of one, and this nightmarish job would be over, was a small comfort to her, as she clutched her arms around the waist of the man in front of her and battled to keep her sweaty palms gripped together.

That was when events took a heart stopping turn. Haruka was thrown violently to the side of the bike as the mysterious man took a sharp turn into a side road.

"Are we going to stop here?" Haruka wondered, but this theory was trampled into the dust as she heard the squeals of tires and angry exclamations of Kiyomi Takada's small army of deadly-looking bodyguards behind her. She recognised the final nail in the coffin, just when it was too late and the end of a cold metal handcuff latched shut around her wrist.

"W-What are you doing?" Haruka cried, horrified. Lidner had trusted her into this man's care. True, she had only met Takada's personal bodyguard that afternoon but her gut instinct had told her that she was the kind of person, who would do her duty until the very end. Her duty was to protect, and delivering the person you were supposed to protect into the hands of a potentially lethal kidnapper, surely didn't fit in with those ideals. Had she been betrayed? Who was this man? And what did he want?

***

Although, they seemed to be driving for countless hours, in reality, it couldn't have been much more than five minutes, during which, Haruka barely managed to suppress her terror and smother the overwhelming urge to throw herself from the bike. However, with the other end of the metal manacle around her wrist still attached to it, this would probably have resulted in a gory and blood-spattered end to her life. "Sit tight," her common sense advised, "Wait for a better opportunity to escape. Maybe, hopefully, he'll just let you go when he realises that you're not Takada. What's the worst that could happen?" But, as a child, who'd spent every night staying up to read detective novels – the more bloody murders the better - and then a teen, who's goal to join the police force had lead to copious amounts of research on the worlds most fascinating criminal cases, she knew about kidnapping and could easily answer her own question.

Finally, just before Haruka's mind started recalling news stories about kidnap cases and grisly ends, the bike slowed, made its last, lurching turn and drove straight up a ramp, into a dark chasm of a truck. The man dismounted and crouched down to her side, taking up her wrist in his leather-clad hand. She clenched her eyes shut and held her breath. "Please God; don't let him kill me!" There was a clicking noise and he then was gone, walking to the back of the truck and pulling closed the vast doors, which had her separated from the outside world. Her head snapped round, of its own accord, to try and catch a last glimpse of fading daylight. Just in case. Puzzled she looked down at her hands. He'd removed the handcuff! Like a shot, she was off the bike and backing as far away from this dangerous man as she possible could. She felt like a mouse must feel as it's trapped by a cat, in the corner of a room, wishing the wall behind her would open up.

After the roaring of the bike's engine and the noise of the street, the world seemed eerily quiet, with only Haruka's heavy breathing and the sound of her blood pumping in her ears. Her kidnapper stood several feet away from her as he reached up to pull the reflective, obscuring helmet from his face.

The beautiful, honey-coloured hair, which just reached his shoulders, seemed so out of place on the tall, wiry, black leather clad body. Clearly this man could be deadly; his whole being was reminiscent of a wild cat. His stance was so feline; Haruka was slightly worried that he might strike, like a cheetah attack she'd, once, seen on a documentary. Even the way he held his head proudly on his shoulders and stared at her with his slanted, greeny-blue eyes, reminded her of the feral cat, with a torn ear and milky eye, which had lived behind her house when she was young. She thought of this especially because, as he rotated his head to face her, she was confronted with a gruesome, raw scar. It threw a dark shadow over half of his face, where the skin had clearly been scorched off. There was a stark contrast between the unnatural burn and the clear, white skin on the other side of his face. She guessed that he had been handsome and, in some ways, he still was. However, it was a dark, dangerous kind of handsomeness. The kind that her mother had hated her to date.

The stranger stared into Haruka's wide-eyed face, opened his mouth as if to say something and then, all of a sudden, snapped it shut. His expression darkened like storm clouds has just rolled across the blue sky and his eyes hardened into slits. "Who are you?" He demanded, through clenched teeth, his voice icy, "and where is Kiyomi Takada?"

***

A/N - Sorry for the shorty chapter. There's a long one coming in a few. I love writing about Mello, and Haruka's fun too.

The next chapter, after this, has been giving me some trouble (and killer migraines!) but will hopefully be out within the next few days. Anyway, thank you for taking the trouble to read this far, I hope you'll be able to give up just a few more seconds to tell me what you thought.


	7. Kira is Justice!

A/N – I don't own Death Note. Obviously.

* * *

Kira Is Justice!

The police radio in the Taskforce headquarters had been playing up for days, much to everyone's annoyance.

"This is Japan! We're _supposed _to be the technological capitol of the world!" true to his irritable nature, Shuichi Aizawa led the grumblings, "We were able get all these computers and radios and TV's, you'd think the most basic thing we could do would be to invest in a radio that actually _works_!"

Everyone had agreed that the youngest member of the team, Touta Matsuda, would go out and buy a replacement the following morning but, for the time being, they were stuck listening to extremely warped communications, and having to give the machine a whack, every ten minutes or so, to shock it into life.

The busted device buzzed into action, just as the sun was finishing its descent and the day was coming to a close. The message was garbled by static leaving only a few words audible.

"We're at NHN studios…Smoke bomb…red car…pursuing him now…other man…riding a motorbike…Miss Takada…turned the corner…lost them…treating this as a kidnapping." Then the connection broke off as it short-circuited for the last time with a bang and a dark wisp of smoke spiralled upwards from the receiver.

"Takada's…been kidnapped?" Matsuda voiced what everyone was thinking, as he was prone to do. "Oh man, this is _really_ bad! What should we do?"

"Don't jump to conclusions, Matsuda," Light Yagami spoke, authoritatively, "The message wasn't clear. We should try and contact Takada before doing anything else. See if she's safe and, if not, what the people who took her want," He reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile, scrolling down to Takada's name, "I'll call her now." He kept his outward appearance at a professional level of concern but internally, he was irately calculating how to best adjust his plans for this new development, in his mission to cleanse the world of criminals.

Had Takada really been kidnapped? Who would do something like this? Light considered Near, but shot down the idea quickly. No. He had no motive, not with the meeting between the task force and the SPK arranged for three days time. This was the work of someone else. An instinctual feeling in his gut told him this wasn't a random attack by Kiyomi's obsessed fans or ransom hunters. Suddenly, it dawned on him; the other person with the means and the motive. L's other heir…Mello!

The phone rang repeatedly and, just when Light was sure it was going to voicemail, a stressed voice, answered, "Hello. Who is it?" He quickly used his razor sharp deductive skills to work out that this person was female, American, judging from the accent, and defiantly not Takada. She sounded familiar, and he immediately pieced together the tense voice with his spokesperson's tall, blond bodyguard, Halle Lidner.

"Miss Lidner? This is Light Yagami." He heard her make a noiseof recognition. Light knew Takada, and it was rare that she was ever without her precious phone, and unlikely that she'd dropped it. "Is Miss Takada with you?"

His eyes widened a fraction when he heard the response. "Yes, she just arrived. We brought her back from her holiday in Kawasaki. After the attack today, we are moving her to a safe house for her protection." Lidner informed him, trusting this information to the head of the Kira taskforce, as Near had instructed her.

Lidner's voice was depressed; she had been berating herself for trusting Mello, hurt by his betrayal and feeling immense guilt for the disappearance of the bright, engaging young girl, who the police had sent. Haruka had been such a refreshing change from the cold, aloof Takada, so polite and clearly overwhelmed by the expensive clothes and make-up. The girl's moods swung from comically outraged to sweet and passionate in moments, and she had made Lidner smile like she hadn't smiled in a long time.

"Kawasaki? We just received a message from the police that she was kidnapped at NHN studios. Of course, it's a relief that she's safe, but what happened?" Light was confused. It was impossible for one person to be in the two places at the same time and yet the radio message had placed her at NHN while her bodyguard claimed she was travelling back from Kawasaki in high security.

Lidner replied, in a composed voice, which concealed the turmoil she was feeling, "It's true that there was a kidnapping, but the girl at NHN studios was a double, Haruka Sato, we had the police send her to the NHN function instead of Miss Takada, due to concerns about recent stalker trouble. We were hoping to lure them out. Apparently, the kidnappers didn't know about the switch."

Light nearly burst out laughing; this great detective, L's protégé, Mello, had snatched the wrong girl! That was almost comical! Clearly, a man, who couldn't even pull of a successful kidnapping, was no threat to the genius mind of Kira. However, Light reflected, more seriously, it was only by chance that there was another person in Takada's place. If he _had_ managed to get to his intended target, it could have jeopardised important plans. Mello was a hindrance. Anger began to stir inside him, "Kira _is_ justice! Any enemies of Kira are enemies of justice!" It would be better for everyone, he ruled, if he were removed from the equation.

"I see, well, thank you for your time, Miss Lidner. I'm sure you're very busy, but before you go, I need you tell your boss that I want to meet her tonight." When Lidner began to protest, Light put his most charming voice to use. "Please tell her, Ma'am. You're a smart woman; you know I'm no threat to her. It's extremely urgent." He ended the call, knowing Takada would agree.

Ever since he had learned of Mello's defiance against Kira's power he had felt a burning rage build in his chest. He had new orders for Takada.

Light turned back to his team and explained to them of Takada's safety and the switch. "Is it Near again?" Aizawa immediately suspected the SPK, knowing them to be capable of kidnapping, since the abduction of Misa Amane and Mogi.

Almost the moment Light opened his mouth to voice his suspicions, a swirling, black N came up on the main screen in the room and an Near began to speak, "L, I am not the one who kidnapped Takada's double, Haruka Sato.

"Is that so?" Light stated his, then concrete suspicions. "Then it has to be…Mello."

"Yes, that's right," Near confirmed the theory, before continuing, "I have to be honest with you on this; we had one of our members escorting Takada, and they confirmed it. Mello was the one, who abducted her. I apologise for letting this happen while one of us was guarding her." Light immediately suspected Lidner; the American was the only new addition to Takada's small army of guards.

"Near," Light stored this detail away and moved on to the next order of business, "Isn't there any way for you to contact Mello?" He hoped there wasn't. For his next plan it would be far better if Near kept his grubby, interfering fingers out of it. As L's successor insisted it was impossible, Light suppressed a smile.

***

Late that night, Light met with Takada, at her safe house, under the pretence of confirming her safety. Once they were alone, he handed her a note.

_Kiyomi, what Mello did today was more than just an attack on you. It was an attack on __Kira. I want you to order some of your bodyguards, with the exception of Lidner, to track him down and, along with any accomplices, kill him. _

* * *

A/N – Grr. I don't know why, but it's insanely difficult to write about Light. This Light/ Near section was needed to tie up some lose ends, which will become clear later. Anyway, for some reason, it took me days to write! I'm not 100 percent happy with it, so if you hate it please let me know and I might scrap the chapter and start again.

Back to the main reason for this A/N. I may have to stop updating as frequently as I have been. Writing has been taking over my life and I need to focus on school work for a bit. But don't worry! There will still be updates, just probably not every other day. Please review.

I promise that the next chapter will be long and action packed!


	8. The Risks We Take

A/N – I don't own Death Note or any of the Death Note characters. This is a longer chapter and a new OC is introduced. Reviews = an imaginary cookie!

* * *

_Recap: _

_Option three was a crazy one. More dangerous than __the first of second and unlike anything Matt had ever done, outside his gameboy. One false move and he was dead but get it right and the whole plan would snap back into place. This way he could feel like he'd tried, and if he died, no-one could say he'd just sat back and let it happen._

"_Don't worry, Mom," Matt smirked as he reached back to pick up the all-important smoke gun. "I've got it all under control all under control!"_

_Matt pulled the trigger._

* * *

The Risks We Take…

These was an echoing _smack_ and then a hiss as Matt's second smoke bomb of the evening impacted with the paved surface beneath him and started spewing fumes, causing pedestrians to double over, coughing and gasping. The gas saturated the air and, within a matter of seconds, it looked like he'd driven into a snowdrift.

Swallowing down his apprehension, Matt swung open the door of his car, steeled himself, and leapt from the, still moving, vehicle. "Please don't let me die, God," He prayed desperately as just before the air was slammed out of his lungs and he sprawled on the pavement. He felt like a baseball must feel right after the bat has hit it hard enough to score a home run. His brief skid along the pavement had ripped his shirt and covered his skin with grazes, which were now filled with grit.

The moment Matt tried to sit up; he knew something was very wrong. A quick, and agonizing, analysis told him that he'd done some serious damage to his ribs, and as he staggered to his feet, coughing, he could taste something bitter and metallic in his mouth. "Get out of here! Look for an alley!" he commanded himself, "You can worry about the injuries later." Each step made him grimace and, worse, the blood collecting in his mouth was beginning to drip down his chin, but the rush of adrenaline pushed him on and he allowed himself fleeting victory grin, "You did it, Matt! You're alive!"

Matt knew that he had to get out of the area before the smoke cleared and his pursuers realised he wasn't in his car. The screeching of metal being torn apart rang in his ears and he knew that his car had collided with the blockade, set out by Takada's bodyguards. It was vital that he slip away now, while everyone was still distracted by the smoke and the crash.

Matt stumbled away into an alleyway and was focussing so hard of putting one battered foot in front of the other, he didn't even notice the little red drops, which were seeping from his wounds and mouth and splattering on the ground around him.

* * *

Kenichi Mochizuki hadn't been on the police force for very long. At twenty-three he was the youngest officer on his team by ten years, and, often, the others would forget that he wasn't as experienced as they were and snap at him. They gave him the boring, menial jobs, like picking up everyone's coffee or doing bicycle safety lectures. This kind of work was like banging his head on his desk for weeks on end, but during the five months he'd been working with this group of cops he'd tried not to make a fuss about the unfair treatment he was receiving, knowing he'd only be met with some snide, sarcastic comment and then be left at his desk, again, the next time something exiting happened. He just got on with his job, all the while, longing for a chance to prove himself.

Mochizuki's only comfort was the new secretary, Haruka, who he was certain was suffering more than he was, unable to even train to become an officer. She was the only person in the station who ever spared him a smile or defended him when the others ganged up on him and her good-natured teasing of him brought a red tinge to his youthful, angelic face.

As a result of this, when Mochizuki's employer, when Superintendent Nakagawa, had burst out off his office and informed them of a possible terrorist attack at NHN studios, the young policeman barely raised his head, sure he'd hear all about it later when _he_ was filling out the paperwork on it. "Mr Mochizuki, don't just sit there like a moron!" He was snapped out of his sulk by the thunderous bellow of his boss, "We're going to the scene of the crime and you're holding us up!" Even the angry rebuke couldn't erase the ecstatic grin that was beginning to work its way across his face. He was going to the scene!

* * *

The police team arrived at the scene of a horrific accident; a chaotic mash of red and black metal, which had clearly once been two separate cars. The red one had, reportedly, belonged to a strangely dressed man, who'd fired a smoke bomb onto the streets outside NHN.

What was strange about this accident was that there were no ambulances, anywhere. Normally, when a crash was this severe, the drivers would have been turned to pulp.

"What do you mean? "He wasn't in the car" So I suppose it just drove itself into this collision!" Superintendent Nakagawa's booming voice was incredulous as he questioned a tall man in sunglasses, who claimed to be a bodyguard of Kiyomi Takada's, and who he decided to nickname Sunglasses.

"No, Sir. That is _not_ what I'm saying." Sunglasses informed the Superintendent, "All I can tell you is what happened. We were escorting a young woman to a function at NHN, when a weird-looking younger guy in a striped shirt and goggles fired a smoke bomb out of the window of that car," He gestured to the mangled automobile, "a team of us went after him, and we nearly had him surrounded, when he fired another one right out into the street. When it emerged from the smoke, the driver's sear was clearly empty and then it just crashed into car number four. Fortunately, the driver had the sense to get out, just seconds before the impact. He's lucky to be alive."

"Hmm. This man in goggles must have jumped when the car was hidden by the smoke. Clever," Nakagawa thought aloud, "Mochizuki! Have a look around for evidence," He barked his youngest officer, who, eager to doing something, practically skipped off, before turning back to Sunglasses, "And what was your motive for following him? Defence of Miss Takada, I suppose?"

"Absolutely not, Sir. Miss Takada wasn't even at the event. The girl we were protecting was sent in by the police, disguised as her, in order to draw out stalkers. We were really only there to keep up appearances," he informed the Superintendent, who promptly lost all colour from his face as recognition filled his mind. Haruka! He'd sent in her to do a policewoman's job, only that morning, and now this had happened. There might be an investigation, leading to disciplinary action against him for even allowing an untrained secretary to take on such a dangerous assignment.

The body guard continued, unaware of the Superintendent's growing sense of dread, "Although, I suppose you could say that we did it for her. You see, we're all completely loyal to Kira, and any attempt to harm him, through Miss Takada or otherwise, must be dealt with, without mercy. I guess the attackers didn't know that we'd replaced her with a double and they were trying to get to her. That makes this guy, and anyone working with him, an enemy of Kira." His expression grew dark and menacing at the thought of anyone trying to harm the people, who were working so hard to make this world a safer place. Suddenly, he noticed the, slightly queasy expression on Nakagawa's face. "So, that's why we followed him, anyway… umm, are you alright, Sir?

Nakagawa attempted to seem calm as he asked the next question, dabbing at his brow, "And the girl send it to pretend to be Miss Takada? I assume she's alright." However, his last shred of hope was crushed when Sunglasses removed his dark shades with a sober expression on his face.

"I'm sorry, Sir, I thought you knew sir. There was another attacker on a motorcycle, he managed to convince the young lady that he could take her to safety, but he lost the bodyguards tailing him. They've both been missing ever since" Sunglasses was solemn as he delivered this news but he was shocked by the look of utter horror on Superintendent Nakagawa's pug-like face. He had gone bright red and a vein in his temple was twitching in a way that didn't look healthy. However, none of his concern was for the missing girl.

"If Haruka dies, then I'll lose my job…everything! I've got to get this sorted!" Nakagawa scurried of back to his panda car and began barking instructions into his radio. Sunglasses, assuming he was finished with, went back to his car, wishing he'd brought a book.

* * *

Meanwhile, Mochizuki was looking intently at some red splatters on the ground, not too far off from the accident. Should he call the Superintendent, he wondered briefly, but a glance in the direction of the car told him that his boss was in no mood to be summoned. Suddenly, an idea occurred to him. The other officers didn't respect him because he was a rookie, no field experience. They all shared stories about the criminals they'd brought down, thugs apprehended or civilians saved. Perhaps, if he were to catch this guy single handed…_that_ would earn him their respect. They wouldn't be able to look down on him then. They couldn't sneer or say, "Here, let me do it. Mochizuki would only mess it up." They would see him as an equal.

Determinedly, Mochizuki tracked the scarlet trail of blood along into an alleyway. With his police gun strapped to his leg, he felt just like a cop from the movies, for the first time.

* * *

A/N – Sorry. I got to the end of this chapter and found it totalled to about 3000 words, so I've cut it down a little and I'm putting the last a bit as a chapter on its own, which will be released later.

I hope you enjoyed what I've given you and like my OC. I wanted to make him a bit like Matsuda; did it come across that way? Please let me know what you thought!


	9. Have You Ever Been Mello?

A/N – I don't own Death Note and I am not pretending to. I ate chocolate during this chapter to help me think like Mello…and, also, because am completely addicted to chocolate.

P.S. The title of the chapter means no intentional copyright infringements and if anyone feels I am abusing the song then I'll change it.

_Recap:_

_The stranger stared into Haruka's wide-eyed face, opened his mouth as if to say something and then, all of a sudden, snapped it shut. His expression darkened like storm clouds has just rolled across the blue sky and his eyes hardened into slits. "Who are you?" He demanded, through clenched teeth his voice icy, "and where is Kiyomi Takada?"_

Have You Ever Been Mello?

They say that a bat's heart beats seven hundred and fifty times per minute, whereas human's hearts take the same amount of time to manage around seventy beats. Under the intense scrutiny and furious glare of the blond man's relentless eyes, Haruka was getting a pretty good idea of what it was like to be a bat.

"Who. Are. You?" He asked each word slowly and separately, his voice had a dangerous and frightening undercurrent that did nothing help Haruka recover her normal sense of self-assurance and stop looking like a deer, caught in the headlights. She scrabbled through her mind, searching through her mental library of knowledge on kidnapping cases and hostage situations for anything that could help her to escape this nightmare. However, when she opened her mouth to respond, all that came out was, "…"

In a split second Haruka's abductor had crossed the distance between them and slammed his gloved palms onto the wall of metal behind them, leaving the whole truck reverberating from the impact. "_Are you with Kira!? Did he send you here!?"_

It was weird that this simple question brought such a strong reaction out of Haruka. Her fear momentarily forgotten, she felt adrenaline course through her veins. She jerked up her head and spat straight in his face. "You're a stranger, who doesn't know the first thing about me! Well I'll tell you something. Kira tore my family to shreds when he "passed judgement" on my brother. I would _die_ before I helped him! So don't you _dare…_" Her yelling was cut of when a hand smothered her mouth and she tasted leather.

"Shut up! Someone might hear you!" The blond man growled, further demonstrating his cat-like nature.

The colour drained from Haruka's face, as she realised what she'd just done. Once again she'd let her temper get the better of her, and this take the consequences were a lot more dire than losing her job. This man could be a psychopath. He could kill her! These fears were only increased when he slunk back a few paces and pulled out a gun. To frightened to do anything except stare unable to even blink, and wait for the inevitable bang that would signify the end of her life.

Ten, agonizing seconds passed. Then the kidnapper spoke. "Take off everything you're wearing and put it all in that box." He gestured to a cardboard container by her feet.

But Haruka was too stunned by the shocking fact, that she _wasn't_ dead to comprehend his words. "Aren't you going to shoot me?" She asked, shakily.

Haruka thought she caught a glance of the first emotion, besides rage, he'd shown, when he seemed to stifle a smirk. He quickly composed his face back into the old scowling mask, "Just put your clothes in the box." Seeing her hesitance, he continued, "Hurry up. You can use this blanket." He picked up a clean, white sheet.

Weighing out her options, Haruka reluctantly conceded that she was safer doing what he said. She turned away and started undoing the buttons on her coat. "What was it they always told us in those safety lectures at school?" She contemplated, silently, as a memory of the policewoman's droning voice floated into her mind.

"_In the event of a Kidnapping, you should always try and call the police as soon as possible…"_

Well, that would be difficult without her phone, which was in her coat pocket, but Haruka was fairly certain that Lidner had alerted the police by now.

"…_try not to antagonise your captor, they may be dangerous…"_

"Does yelling at your captor and spitting at them count as antagonising?" Haruka wondered, numbly, before ruling that it probably did.

"…_you probably won't get more than one chance to escape. So, if you do, make it count."_

An escape plan began to materialize in Haruka's mind. The gun-toting, possible psychopath was stood between her and the door. It wasn't ideal circumstances for making a break for it, but for all she knew, she could be minutes away from having her throat slit and her body dumped in a roadside ditch. She had to distract him if she was going to get past. He tossed the blanket over to her just before she finished undressing, and glancing over at him, she noticed that his non-scarred cheekbone was tinged with red. He was blushing? "Well," She decided as she wrapped it around herself, "I guess he's not going to be much more distracted than when he's just seen me almost naked." She turned around.

* * *

Mello felt oddly relieved, when the girl finished changing. During his time with the Mafia, he'd seen plenty of women in various states of undress. Most of the men he'd worked with had no time for wives or girlfriends, so relied on prostitutes for female company. Exposure wasn't the problem, so why was he blushing? He just hoped she hadn't noticed.

"Slide the box over here," Mello instructed, nodding to a spot on the ground by his feet. She kicked the box slightly harder than he expected. It collided with the wall behind him, before toppling over, the clothes tumbling out. Almost without thinking he turned and stepped to the side to gather them up. In the split second his guard was down, she had sprinted past him and was reaching out for the lock that was keeping her trapped.

Mello realised what she planned to do before he had fully crouched down. His eerie eyes widened and he sprung back up, just in time to grab the fleeing girl and drag her away from the exit. She lashed out, scratching and writhing against the leather-clad arms, which were latched around her waist, her one chance of escape flying away from her, just when she was nearly free! He shoved her into a corner at the back of the truck and snatched up her forearm, "You stupid girl!" he snarled, latching the one end of the handcuff back around her wrist and closing it so tightly it was painful. The other end he latched to a grate on the floor, stopping her from moving more than a few feet away from the spot where she was laying. "Nobody's ever got the better of me before and I'll be damned if you're the first!"

Mello gathered up the scattered clothes before leaping out the back of the vehicle and slamming the door behind him.

* * *

The door of the truck echoed shut behind Mello, as he stormed out, embarrassed that he'd made, such a stupid, rookie error. He was glad there a wall of metal between him and the inconvenient girl, who'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and ruined everything. "She's very brave, though." His subconscious commented before Mello crammed it down into a remote corner of his mind.

Mello rooted through the box of clothes, which he'd snatched up on his way out, pulling out a wallet, which was buried deep in the pocket of a white coat, and contained a Japanese driver's licence. Haruka Sato was printed in bold font, her age was nineteen and she worked as a police secretary. He raised his eyebrows. She wasn't a cop, then.

Mello climbed into the drivers cab and started up the engine. It was important to get away from here, as they were still within a three mile radius NHN studios and he was certain the place would be swarming with policemen within minutes. He absent mindedly brought his hand up to touch the rosary around his neck.

"Am I doing the right thing, God? Help me" Mello called upon the one constant in his life, ever since he had been found, days old and abandoned, outside a church in England, with a nothing to reveal his identity but a note. The note begged Father Keehl, the kind, elderly priest, to take him in and raise him as his own, and announced him as "baby Mihael." This had all went perfectly; the lonely old man had a son to bring joy into his life, and Mihael had a father to feed, clothe and read him bedtime stories, mainly from a worn, leatherbound Bible but, also, some fantastical fairy tales, that had been passed down the Keehl family for generations about dragons and heroes.

However, the perfect, dream life was shattered, when the chain-smoking old priest had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and passed away in his sleep, six weeks later, leaving five year old Mihael completely alone in the world. From then on he was passed from care home to care home, with no memento of his happy childhood but the Father's ornate rosary and his deeply instilled Catholicism, which had never quite left him.

Mihael's longest placement was a year in America, with a young couple who had underestimated the difficulties of raising a troubled, eight year old genius. After his hurried return to England, with all his possessions crammed into a ratty suitcase by the unnerved parents, who couldn't get rid of him soon enough, he was met at the airport, not by a condescending social worker, or a foster mother, who'd dragged the ten other screaming brats along with her to welcome him. Instead, he saw an elderly gentleman, with a white moustache, a black hat and shining eyes.

"_Come with me Mihael. We have a lot to discuss about your future. Perhaps we can talk in the car?" The lines around the man's wrinkly eyes creased into a welcoming smile, like Mihael hadn't seen his three __wandering years. Watari held out a big, gloved hand to the young boy, and Mello, after scowling ferociously to see if the man recoiled, like all the foster parents to date had, gripped it with his clamp-like, little fingers._

Mello knew that there were two possibilities for how Haruka Sato had come to be on the back of his bike instead of Kiyomi Takada:

Firstly, she was a decoy, sent to protect Takada against some potential threat. It was possible and plausible with such a high-profile public figure as the newswoman. But on the other hand, this girl wasn't a cop, she had to idea how to react to the kidnapping, and why would the police send in an untrained girl for a potentially dangerous mission.

The other option was that she was a pawn of Kira's, this was the conclusion his naturally suspicious mind had jumped to when he first realised he had the wrong girl. The murderer had brain power that had managed to send the great L to his grave. It wasn't impossible that he could use his influence, either through blackmail or bribes, to manipulate a young girl into working with him to erase the threat of one of the successors.

Mello sighed and screwed up his forehead. If the second option was true, there was no way that he could let her go. Soichiro Yagami had known his name, and Kira had access to police information. He needed a name and face to kill and now this girl, Haruka knew his face. If he let her go, she could write his name in the Death Note and that would be the end of him. No. The risk was too great. Father Keehl wouldn't have approved of what he was doing, Watari certainly wouldn't have approved and L would probably have had him behind bars before he could blink, as was his custom with kidnappers. However, for the sake of his own life, Haruka Sato would have to stay with him, at least for now.

* * *

Haruka lay propped up against the wall of the truck gasping for breath and clawing at the skin around her neck, trying to relieve the tightness that had developed there. Her lips and fingernails were a worrying shade of blue her pulse was racing. Just before she collapsed on the freezing, metal floor she wheezed out a sentence that was lost in the roaring of the engine.

"Inhaler…I need…my in…haler."

* * *

A/N - Yay! long chapter. Likey? No likey? The button's just down there.


	10. Desperate Times

Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

Matt snatched a dark blue hoodie of someone's balcony railing, which they had left there to dry. He started to walk off, but then, feeling a twinge of guilt, he dug in his pocket, turned and threw a fistful of paper money over the railings. "That'll more than cover it," he reflected, "And, anyway, I've got a feeling I need this more than they do."

It was true. With his stripy shirt torn and dirty with blood and grit, his new, vampire-ish smile, and his trademark goggles, slightly askew after his recent tumble, Matt wasn't exactly inconspicuous. In fact, he stuck out like an orang-utan at a business meeting. He rarely had lapses in common sense, but dressing like this on a day when nothing was more important than _not_ being noticed, had _not_ been his finest moment.

Matt pulled the hood over his cut head, and winced at the twinge in his aching ribs; he stashed his goggles in his pocket and squinted around for inspiration. A sign over to his left informed him that there was a car park on his left. "Perfect," he decided, looking on the bright side, "I'll swipe a car and get back to the apartment before midnight. Then we can see how bad the damage is. Mello knows about medical stuff…kind of," he had absolute faith in his lifelong friend. "He'll know what to do." However, he couldn't suppress the knowledge, that the blood coming up, out of his thoat with every cough was an indicator of bad damage internally, and medical attention was one thing he couldn't get, while keeping a low profile. The police were probably already putting out alerts for him in nearby hospitals.

The car park was deserted when Matt entered, only a handful of cars. Before he could decide which one would be most fun to break into and hotwire, he heard soft footsteps approaching him from behind. The person stopped about two feet away and alarm bells went off in his heed. Is it a cop? Why have they stopped? Am I doing anything suspicious?

"Excuse me?" a quiet female voice interrupted Matt's thoughts, "Can I get by?" His eyes widened and he breathed out a sigh of relief. This was no cop. He was blocking the entrance to the car park.

"Of course, I'm sorry" He stood to the side to let her by and she looked up into his face to show him a grateful smile, which he immediately returned with his crooked grin. Her expression quickly turned worried.

"You're face is covered in blood! Are you all right? Here, let me have a look," She reached up to touch his face and Matt quickly side stepped her protesting. "Oh, don't worry, I'm a nurse." Matt was on the verge of saying no again, when he realised that this was a perfect opportunity to get a little medical help without getting any hospitals involved. It would only take a few minutes, tops.

"Okay," Matt agreed, "but I think it looks worse than it is."

It was a challenge to stop himself sighing in relief when Matt felt cool fingers probing his inflamed skin. He sank down on the brick wall behind him.

"Ouch." she sympathised, "those cuts are going to need cleaning. I think I have some wipes in my car. It'll be easier if you take off your hoodie. Do you mind..." After a quick glance around, he decided to risk it and tugged the jacket over his head, while she retrieved a first-aid kit from a nearby blue car. She tugged it open and pulled out some medical wipes. When she leaned over to start cleaning the dirt out of the cuts on his face, Matt suddenly found he was staring down the front of her shirt. He sat, frozen in place for a couple of seconds, before tearing his eyes away, not wanting to offend this girl, who was helping him. She seemed to realise the problem, and hitched her top up, blushing. "My name's Shiori Tendo." She introduced herself, suddenly.

"I'm Matt." He replied, giving her his alias, judging her to be low risk enough that it wouldn't matter.

Matt felt his eyes stray back to Shiori. Not many people would stop to help a complete stranger on a dark night, and he was curious. His scrutinizing mind began to break down what he knew about her, to learn about her, without asking any intrusive questions. He could tell she was very young; probably only eighteen or nineteen. This meant she must be exceptionally clever to be working as a nurse at that age. She was obviously a sweet girl, after all, you'd have to be to stop and help a complete stranger. "She's cute, too," his subconscious butted in to his thoughts. And he found it was true. Maybe, she wasn't stunningly beautiful, probably not the first girl he'd be drawn to if he'd met her in a busy club or a party, but she had certain qualities, which made him stop and look again. Her, straight, dark hair had a slight red sheen to it and her eyes were big and dark, with curly lashes, stood out against her pale, white skin. Also, she had a dimple in the corner of her mouth, which he noticed when she grinned up at him.

"You've really been in the wars, haven't you?" Shiori probed, trying to work out what had happened to this man. "Were you in a fight?"

"No." Matt rummaged through his mind for a believable excuse, before he decided to go with a version of the truth, "I was in a car accident."

Shiori made a face, showing that she didn't believe him, but didn't ask any more about it, "You're not from Japan, are you? Your face looks western" Shiori changed to a different subject, feeling her curiousity mounting.

"I was born in America. But I moved to England when I was really young." Matt mentally rebuffed himself for telling a girl he'd just met all about himself. It was just the kind of thing that would come back to bite him one day. "I came to Japan for my work."

"What do you do?"

"I'm in the computer buisness" he told her, honestly.

Matt nearly laughed when he realised that this was the closest he'd come to a date in nearly two years. Even if the circumstances of them meeting were slightly on the weird side, he was pleased to have a conversation with a girl. He'd dated before the Kira case but over the past few months, every hour he wasn't sleeping, he was working. Mello could be a real slave driver when he though Near knew something they didn't.

"Did you get hit in the mouth?" Shiori queried, bringing Matt out of his thoughts as she reached the source of the crimson liquid on his chin.

"No. I don't think so"

"That's a lot of blood coming out. Let me take you to the hospital, you could have internal injuries." Her voice rose, slightly, as though she was alarmed.

"Nah. Don't worry. My friend's a doctor." The lie rolled of Matt's tongue, "He'll sort me out me when I get home."

"Please, Matt. I wouldn't feel right just letting you wander off in your state. What if you went into shock? What if-," Shiori was cut off by a voice ringing out of the darkness, in the alley behind them.

"Freeze! Put your hands above your head!"

No. Matt felt the word ring round and round his head like a smoke detector. No. No. No! If he was arrested now, he knew it would only be a matter of time before Kira or his army of vigilantes got to him and made his heart stop beating. He was nineteen, just a kid! He had his whole life ahead of him. Had he really risked everything by jumping out of a speeding automobile and staggering to for miles, only to be dragged back? Failure wasn't an option. No. As fear made his mind shut of from his body, he remembered a conversation he'd had with the psychology teacher at Wammy's house just weeks before he left with Mello.

"_Just stop and think, Matt. Life has continued to thrive on earth for millions of years. It carries on, no matter what, and not all humans were great geniuses. And do you know why? Survival instinct, Matt. Our bodies are programmed, like the computers you're so fond of, to know exactly what to do in the face of danger. After all, all our bodies really want to do is survive for as long as possible. It's why an antelope knows to run from a cheetah…When in doubt, let your survival instinct take over, it's got us this far and it might just save you."_

So Matt turned over to his autopilot. "All right, survival instinct of a teenage super genius," he asked himself, "what do we do?" But what he did, surprised even him.

He felt himself leap off the wall with an unexpected burst of energy and speed, Then he reached out his bruised and bloodstained arm, grabbed Shiori's wrist. He yanked her in front of him, pulling her to his chest as she cried out in alarm and tried to shove him off.

"Let me go! What are you doing?" Shiori tried to drive her elbow into him and squirm away but adrenaline gave Matt a brief recess from the suffocating pain in his chest. He gripped her tighter and ignored her cries. Then he reached back into his collar and pulled out the deadly weapon he'd concealed in there earlier. Just in case. He stood so that one of his arms was wrapped tight around her waist, squeezing her against him, and stopping her in her tracks as she tried to jerk herself out of his immovable grip. The other clutched a firearm, which he pressed into the girl's temple, with a slight tremor in his hand.

Matt knew what he was doing was wrong. He knew that this was the kind of thing he spent his life trying to prevent, and yet he carried on. He didn't want to die.

A rasping, agitated voice, which sounded nothing like him, erupted from Matt's throat. "Let me go orI will _kill_ her." He promised Mochizuki.

A/N –This was lopped of the end of Chapter 8 (The Risks We Take) and is a fairly long chapter by itself, so the original was _really_ long. This chapter introduced Shiori, who is my final main OC, probably. Anyway, please review and give me your opinions on the whole thing.

The button's right there. _Click it._


	11. Will to Live

_Recap:_

_Haruka lay propped up against the wall of the truck gasping for breath and clawing at the skin around her neck, trying to relieve the tightness that had developed there. Her lips and fingernails were a worrying shade of blue her pulse was racing. Just before she collapsed on the freezing, metal floor she wheezed out a sentence that was lost in the roaring of the engine. "Inhaler…I need…my in…haler."_

* * *

_Late that night, Light met with Takada, at her safe house, under the pretence of confirming her safety. Once they were alone, he handed her a note._

Kiyomi, what Mello did today was more than just an attack on you. It was an attack on Kira. I want you to order some of your bodyguards, with the exception of Lidner, to track him down and, along with any accomplices, kill him.

* * *

Will to Live

Mello was getting uneasy. News of his slip-up had spread across Japan with hours. Every radio station he flicked to was playing the same unaltered story.

"Two unknown men attacked NHN studious in the early evening, in what, police believe, was an attempt to kidnap the infamous Kiyomi Takada: news anchor and spokeswoman to Kira. In the confusion, it appears that they, instead, abducted her bodyguard, Miss Haruka Sato. Superintendent Nakagawa of the Kanto Police Department was on the scene within minutes and he had this to say…"before he put an agitated stop to the transmissions, preferring the silence.

They had passed more than four police cars in the last half hour and as the night grew darker and he drew away from the bustling roads of the city, the more Mello was sure that someone would begin to suspect a lone truck, driving around in the early hours, when today was becoming tomorrow, with a driver, who's hastily pulled on baseball cap was partially obscuring his distinctive face. If they attracted the suspicion of the police and got pulled over, he had no doubt that this girl, Haruka would try to get the officer's attention by banging on the walls or calling out. He couldn't let that happen.

At the last moment, Mello made the split second decision to turn of into an abandoned forest trail. They bumped over the seldom-used track for a couple of hundred metres before he felt certain that they would be completely hidden from the roads and ground them to a halt. He leapt from the driver's seat onto the grassy earth, with cat-like grace.

They would hide out here for tonight, he decided. The roads had been completely deserted when he veered of course into the woods, so the chances of anyone finding them were minimal. Even from satellite the thick foliage would act as a shield, hiding them from any prying eyes.

During his hours of driving, Mello had had time to cool of from his earlier fury at his prisoner's escape attempt and his own failure to realise her plan until it was nearly too late. He also realised that he was starving. He headed to the entrance of the back of the truck to see if she was awake and offer her some food. He paused at the door, feeling an unusual pang of guilt. If her story was true then she was no more than an unwitting civilian, dragged into this unfortunate situation by the powerful current of the whirlpool that Kira had started in his mission. However, he couldn't bring himself to take the risk of letting her go now. She was still a tangible threat to his life.

Mello had expected to be dead by this point in the kidnapping but, even tough things hadn't gone quite according to plan, he wasn't prepared for the stirrings of echo in the mind the he had worked so hard to toughen and make completely uncaring, over the years. This echo was quickly mutating into something he hadn't felt since he was a child, running around the Vicarage garden, laughing, as his bright and curious mind discovered all the new sensations, sights, smells and sounds that the expanding world had to offer him. It was the desire to keep living, to keep feeling those sensations.

"How did this happen?" Mello asked himself, frustrated at his brilliant mind's inability to understand, "Yesterday, I would have given my life in a second, if it meant I could get rid of Kira. Now, I sure don't want to die! What's happened to me?"

Sliding back the bolt, which sealed the truck/prison, he peered into the gloom, expecting Haruka to startle awake, start screaming, something. But there was nothing. For a moment he felt himself freeze up. Had she escaped, somehow? Where was she? However, as his feline eyes became accustomed to the dark, he made out a human form, slumped on the floor, unmoving.

Mello felt his heart sink. He realised, almost at once, what had happened. Kira had killed her; this young girl had never committed a crime in her life but she was dead, murdered, just for being associated with the blond detective. So much for Kira's ideals of justice.

Mello felt a familiar cool, creeping back over his heart. Apathetic, he turned from black cavern. He started to close the door silently, when he was startled out of his reverie by a gentle sound, so faint he almost missed it. He turned back opened the door and heard it again, but slightly louder. What _was_ it? Then he heard it again, a rasping, rattling voice materialising out of the shadows, "H-help…me…"

Some instinctive force propelled Mello forward, faster than he could ever recall moving. He knelt and rolled over the limp form on the freezing floor. Eerie moonlight streamed in from the entrance, flung wide in his hurry. It threw a radiant beam across the face of the girl, whose sickly pale skin enhanced the unnatural blue around her mouth. She mumbled again.

"I can't hear you! What's the matter? What's wrong?" Mello slid one arm around her waist, his hand flush with the centre of her back. He pulled her up against him so that her dusky lips were almost against his ear. "What did you say?"

"Please…my asthma…I need…my…inhaler"

* * *

Sunglasses' real name was Shinichiro Fujioka. A tall, threatening man, who lived alone and was married to his job. He sat in the driver's seat of his sleek, black car, doing the same thing he had been doing for what felt like hours. Nothing.

Fujioka was bored. Frustration boiled up in him again at how useless he was, just sat there! The reason he'd become a bodyguard wasn't out of any sense of justice, wanting to make the world a better place. That was what he told people, but his reasons ran deeper. He liked thrills, chasing and violence. Even at school, aged ten or eleven, bullying and taunting the small, nerdy kids was how he got his sadistic kicks. But that was still before he knew any better.

When Fujioka began to develop a social conscience, aged about fourteen, he finally understood what all the teachers and anger management counsellors had been telling him for years. He recognised that it was wrong to hurt innocent people. He made a vow to reform himself, sacrificing his street cred for his morals.

However, after a month with a clean record, just when he was beginning to be recognised for his changing in attitude and people were changing towards him, Fujioka's cold turkey backfired on him. He couldn't really remember what had happened, he'd been standing in a checkout queue at a shop, when the smarmy, well groomed kid in front of him had stumbled back and brought his smart, polished school shoe down on his ratty trainer. The boy had turned to apologise, taken in his tattered sweater and greasy, unkempt hair, sneered and turned away. A small incident, which could have been over looked by anyone else, made the slowly building flood waters in his mind, finally burst through the wall of defences. He snapped.

Fujioka's vision had turned red, he lost control of his body, after the first punch, his mind had gone blank, and that had been that. The other boy hadn't died, he'd been dragged away by security long before it had gone that far, but, unfortunately for him, rich boy's father had been one of Japan's most prestigious lawyers and had sent him to a young offender's institution for eight months. His incontrollable anger had seen him in and out if the place more than a dozen times during his teens. After that, he'd progressed to real jails.

Several years later, the twenty year old Fujioka experienced a revelation. Left in a cell for the night to cool off after a bar fight, he had been slouching against a hard wooden bench, scowling at the chipped grey paint of the wall opposite when he heard a crash and a gurgling, gagging sound. When he looked around, he saw the source of the noise was an older guy with bad-teeth and glasses, collapsed on the floor, clutching his chest and foaming at the mouth. Immediately, he stood up and hollered for the guards, but the man's twitching had stopped long before the reached him. That was his first experience with the work of Kira.

Across the world, millions of criminals were trying desperately to redeem themselves and escape Kira's vengeance; joining the church, informing on others. The one thing they all had in common was their fear. Fujioka never felt that. Instead he had a stumbling realisation; this unseen force was doing what he had wanted to do his whole life. The innocent were not only left alone, they were protected! And the bad guys were punished. The thrill was still there, the chase was still there and the violence of the heart attacks couldn't be more obvious.

Fujioka became Kira's most avid worshipper. He saw him as a brilliant god, who would set the world to rights. And he would help. He joined the police force and spent ten years working his way up the ranks, in order to hand criminals over to Kira himself, he got his buzz by chasing them and roughing them up a bit. All that was left after that was too leak their photo onto the internet and left the inevitable happen.

Three months ago, when he had been assigned as head of Kiyomi Takada's bodyguards, he had been overjoyed. He could continue in his mission and aid his idol more directly by protecting his loyal spokeswoman.

The events of the day didn't really bother him. He felt sorry for the missing girl and hoped she would be safe but it was nothing to do with him. He leant back and yawned, glaring through his sunglasses and the large, purple-face superintendent, who was still running around the crime scene. Suddenly, he felt the silver phone in his back pocket start to buzz.

"Number unknown," he wondered, before lazily pressing the answer call button, readying himself to bawl out a telemarketer. "Hello?"

"Fujioka, this is Takada." The female voice in his ear made his eyebrows shoot up. "I have new orders for you. As soon as that idiot superintendant says you can go, it is Kira's will that you pursue the kidnappers. Are you clear on that?"

"Perfectly, Madam." Fujioka's vicious smile, twitched across his face for a second before he hung up the phone.

The chase was on.

* * *

A/N – Chapter 10! (Slash 11 depending on whether you count the prologue) I can't believe how much writing I've done. This is the longest I've ever stuck with a project and now I'm completely determined to see it through until the end. However, school is consuming a lot of my free time, at the moment, so be ready for a small decrease in the frequency of my updates.

I've got my mocks in the next two weeks but I'll try to get a few chapters out.

Any reviews are appreciated, even if they're just a couple of words.


	12. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

_Recap: _

"_My name's Shiori Tendo." She introduced herself, suddenly._

"_I'm Matt." He replied._

"_Freeze! Put your hands above your head!"_

_Matt knew what he was doing was wrong. He knew that this was the kind of thing he spent his life trying to prevent, and yet he carried on. He didn't want to die._

_He felt himself leap off the wall with an unexpected burst of energy and speed, Then he reached out his bruised and bloodstained arm, grabbed Shiori's wrist, and yanked her in front of him, pulling her to his chest as she cried out in alarm and tried to shove him off. _

_A rasping, agitated voice, which sounded nothing like him, erupted from Matt's throat. "Let me go or I will kill her." He promised Mochizuki._

* * *

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Each second passed like time was sluggishly moving through tar. All Shiori could think about was the feeling of the deadly metal gun, pressing into her skull and the vice-like grip of the, suddenly chilling, man behind her. Her mind could barely comprehend what had lead to this situation.

_Shiori had__ been making her way from the General hospital, where she'd been covering a friend's night shift, to the car park, her heart heavy. Just that night the ER had battled to save the lives of three more young men, none of whom had a history of heart problems, who had just collapsed; two in their prison cells and one in a local convenience store, where he worked. Herself, the doctors and a team of other nurses had done everything they could to restart the lifeless bodies. They always did. Even though everyone knew that once Kira had passed judgement on you, there was no hope. Like every other night they had been forced to call time of death and move onto the next patient. _

_At the entrance to the parking, Shiori had bumped into a tall western man__, drenched in bright, red blood, but with a sweet smile, which distracted from his battered appearance. Although, her common sense had told her that it was a bad idea to be alone with a dangerous looking stranger in a deserted place, she'd found herself unable to leave him alone and bleeding. Not when she could offer him help. _

_The li__ttle light provided by the stars had made it difficult to properly examine his cuts, as did his distractingly bright, blue eyes. Although Shiori had been shy throughout her life, she had always thought she had a good bedside manner, but it was ridiculously easy to talk to this man, who introduced himself as Matt, despite her doubts about his, "car accident." _

_As __Shiori's eyes grew accustomed to the shadows around them, her eyes wondered down to his crimson stained lips saw the copious amounts of red liquid gushing from his mouth and trickling down his chin. Her eyes had widened; blood in the mouth might be a simple cut, but, after a battering like he's clearly just had, a horrendous internal injury wasn't unlikely. Despite her pleas, he'd resisted all her attempts to get him to the hospital, seemingly oblivious to the danger of his situation._

_Then it had happened. Sensations flashed through her mind like a whirring slideshow, an old black and white horror film. There appeared a solitary policeman holding a glinting firearm, and then came his angry cry of, "Freeze!" Matt's face turned fearful and wide eyed, then, strangely blank. A grazed hand clenched around her wrist, then there was dull pain as the sharp, metal links of her watch bit into her wrist, her own cry of terror as a long arm wrapped around her and encased her like a cage and, finally, she felt terror as her eyes slid to the side and were held by a the barrel of a handheld gun, which could end her life before she could blink._

"_Let me go or I will kill her."_

* * *

Superintendant Nakagawa slammed down his radio and darted his beady eyes around the scene, wondering what, if anything, Mochizuki had found in his sweep of the area. He turned a full circle. Where was that Kid? When he brought him along, he didn't think he'd have to babysit him, and at this point in the case, each second was vital.

"Hey!" He called over to Sunglasses, who was muttering to another bodyguard, as he fidgeted, impatient to be gone. "Have you seen a younger looking cop around here? He was meant to be sweeping the area for me but it looks like he's pulled a disappearing act on us." Irritation clouded his tone.

Sunglasses opened his mouth to inform Nakagawa that he'd never seen him, when his friend interjected, "The short guy with the round face? I saw him walk into that alley over there not long ago…" He trailed off as the seething Superintendant marched off towards the alley, a murderous look on his face.

Sunglasses looked after him, eyebrows raised, "What an ass," he commented.

Nakagawa may have been short tempered and scheming, but he didn't get to be Superintendant of one of the most prestigious police stations in the Kanto region for no reason. It took him only moments to piece together the trail of blood leading down the alleyway with Mochizuki's ambitious nature and realise what had happened. He punched the wall, momentarily oblivious to the pain shooting up his stubby fingers. This was the straw that broke the camels back. He let out a bellow of rage.

"Where does this alley come out?" He demanded of another of Takada's bodyguards, who was staring at him as though he were a lunatic.

"There's not a lot in that area, a few houses, a car park. It's on the same road as the hospital." The perplexed man replied, but Nakagawa was already bellowing for his remaining men and heading back to his car, charging like a bull through the crime scene. If Mochizuki wasn't already dead, he was going to _kill _him!

Matt analysed the situation in a second. The cop was young, inexperienced and would be easily manipulated.

"Okay." Mochizuki took a deep breath, faced with a situation he hadn't foreseen when he strode of alone to be the knight in shining armour, "Listen...um…sir? You don't want to do this. Just put the gun down, think about it, the sentence for conspiracy to kidnap is a lot shorter than murder. You're only making things worse for yourself..." He trailed off, perturbed by the low, humourless chuckle, which emanated from Matt's throat.

"C'mon pal, we both know that with Kira's "_justice_" hanging over us like a guillotine, a shoplifter's gonna get the exact same punishment as a serial killer, and I don't feel like _dying _any time soon!" Matt's Mr Hyde was still in full swing, "Now put the gun down, and slide it over here." Sensing Mochizuki's hesitancy, he continued, his tone icy, "_Or_ she dies. Whichever you prefer."

Reluctantly, Mochizuki complied, rendering himself as useless and unprotected as a child. He'd screwed up again. Possibly endangering a young girl and humiliating himself in the process. He'd by lucky if he wasn't fired, after this, let alone let ff the bike safety lectures!

Matt lowered his head down next to Shiori's so their faces were lightly touching, his mouth poised by her ear. Mr Hyde, once again, smothered down any pangs of guilt the normal Matt would feel at seeing the terror in her face and the single tear, winding down her ashen face. "Listen. Do as I tell you and you'll be fine. Okay?" She nodded and her gave her his instructions, "Get out your keys, give 'em to me and then walk with me backwards to your car. And _you,_" here he looked over Mochizuki, narrowing his eyes, "stay right where you are."

Shiori shivered as she reached down into her pocket and pulled a single key, which she dropped into the open palm of the hand in front of her. They retreated to the big, rusty, vehicle, from which she'd retrieved her medical wipes, just minutes before. He pulled the door open. It was then that she felt a flicker of hope. Surely, now he'd let her go; he'd drive off in her car. What would be the point of dragging a hostage along.

Matt lowered himself in a slid along to the drivers seat, still keeping a grip on Shiori's wrist. He looked up at her standing by the car, unmoving. "Get in," He looked back at the, still stationary, Mochizuki before pulling her towards him. "C'mon."

The flicker of hope in her heart wavered, "B-but _why_? What do you need me for now?"

Matt opened his mouth to reply, but his mind came up blank. Why was he so reluctant to let go of her hand? What good could she do him?

For a moment, everything was silent, while he sat behind the wheel, gripping onto Shiori with one hand, while the other held a gun at her temple. She gazed down at him, her eyes wide and confused. Then, for the second time that night, the moment was shattered and the car park erupted with noise and motion.

Three police cars screeched into the area, surrounding the car. There was shouting and seven ominous guns trained on Matt. Finally, Mr Hyde made his last appearance of the night. Leaning across to his hostage, he tugged her into the passenger seat (Normal Matt winced at the cracking noise her head made as it collided with the dashboard) and revved the cars decrepit engine into life. He executed a 180 degree turn and slammed down the accelerator, blessing the relic of a car for its solid, tank-like design, and rammed a cop car out of the way as he sped out of the exit, onto the empty night-time streets, closely perused by a tail of Japanese police, sirens echoing into the night.

Matt glanced down at the still, silent figure, slumped in the seat next to him. The thin line of blood dripping from her forehead to her jaw and her general lack of screaming and struggles told him she must have been knocked unconscious when she hit her head.

"Deal with it later, Matt!" he commanded himself, glancing into his rear-view mirror, as bullets whistled around him and smashed circles in this windshield. "Right now, you've got bigger things to worry about!"

* * *

A/N – REVIEW!

I hope you're enjoying the story (if you've bothered to read this far, I'm flattered!)

Thanks especially to Sensible One, kaaayyytteee and Lizz3h-Jeevas-Keehl for their regular feedback. You guys are amazing!


	13. Devotion

A/N – First off, a quick note. Sorry, for temporarily abandoning the story! The last two weeks have been completely consumed by my mocks, leaving very little time for updates! I feel really bad and I will continue writing more in the future. Thanks guys, for still reading despite my irregular updates.

One more thing, before I get on with the chapter, (don't worry this is the last thing) I'm not a nurse or a doctor, nor do I has asthma. Most of what I've written is based on information from Wikipedia, so if you notice any holes in my medical knowledge, please feel free to correct me.

Thank you, I'll shut up now.

* * *

_Recap:_

"_Fujioka, this is Takada." The female voice in his ear made his eyebrows shoot up. "I have new orders for you. As soon as that idiot superintendant says you can go, it is Kira's will that you pursue the kidnappers. Are you clear on that?"_

"_Perfectly, Madam." Fujioka's vicious smile twitched across his face for a second before he hung up the phone. _

_Some instinctive force propelled Mello forward, faster than he could ever recall moving. He knelt and rolled over the limp form on the freezing floor. Eerie moonlight streamed in from the entrance, flung wide in his hurry. It threw a radiant beam across the face of the girl, whose sickly pale skin enhanced the unnatural blue around her mouth. She mumbled again. _

"_I can't hear you! What's the matter? What's wrong?" Mello slid one arm around her waist, his hand flush with the centre of her back. He pulled her up against him so that her dusky lips were almost against his ear. "What did you say?"_

"_Please…my asthma…I need…my…inhaler" _

Devotion

"_That does it! _We can't waste any more time!"

Following the hurried and furious departure of Superintendant Nakagawa, Shinichiro Fujioka had decided that he, and Kiyomi Takada's remaining bodyguards, couldn't be reasonably expected to slouch around like slackers, instead of the deadly, trained force of assassin-like defenders that they were.

Each man on the force had fought his way to be there. When they weren't working, they were at the gym, working to acquire the best physique, or at weapons training, refining their, already practically flawless, killing techniques. And when they weren't doing that, the men spent their free time doing what they loved. Worshipping Kira.

None of the men assigned to Takada were there out of adoration for the newswoman, or even out of desire for the hefty pay check that they received monthly. Everything they did was for their hero, the transcendent being, who was cleansing the world of unworthy people. By spreading the word of Kira, Kiyomi Takada had made herself useful in the attainment of the new world, and therefore, was someone, who must be protected.

When this dedicated group were sent out to guard, not Takada, but some girl with the police, the had been disgruntled at the fruitless task, but reluctantly agreed, but only after demanding that at least half of them remain behind to ensure the safety of their real charge. After a cold introduction of Haruka Sato to the daunting second in command of the team, Fujioka, she'd been taken under the wing of Halle Lidner, who'd rolled her eyes and risen above the resent of her subordinates, and guided the girl from wardrobe assistant, to make-up artist, to a limousine headed to NHN.

Despite an unspoken pact between the men to show Haruka, through their actions, that she was a bother, they had been impressed by the way she carried herself, face bright and determined, yet clearly extremely young, and, also, by her unexpected friendliness towards them, constantly saying, "please," and, "thank you," and treating them with an easygoing openness, to which they were unaccustomed. She was charismatic and spoke her mind and, by the end of the day had convinced Mimura that it was time to take control of his life and move out from his overbearing mother's house, was on first name terms with uptight Inada and had made Shimizu, a man, who no one could remember even chuckling, practically collapse in hysterical laughter.

Fujioka had been thrown. Haruka was such a polar opposite of their cold and aloof employer. Much to his surprise, by the evening, every man the team had been completely won over by her. Each had suffered with the knowledge that she'd been taken and felt guilty that they'd been chasing down the smoke bomber rather than looking out for her.

The time had come to take action. Nakagawa was back on the tail of the smoke bomber, no longer concerned with them. "Back to your cars, boys," Fujioka ordered the restless, pacing team, "I want Mimura, Inada, Souma and Shimizu with me. The rest of you, return to Miss Takada's side and wait for further instructions." Like tightly coiled springs, the men leapt to the task, relieved of their boredom, and returned to their sleek, shiny cars until no one was left apart from the chosen men, who approached their leader, curiously.

"What are our instructions?" Inada queried, eyes glinting with anticipation.

Fujioka scrunched up his forehead in contemplation, then he spoke, "The police are going after the guy with the smoke bombs and judging by all that blood…" he indicated the dimly lit entrance to a nearby alley, the crimson spots on the ground staining the pale concrete, "…well, it doesn't look like he's going to be too much of a bother. He'll feel Kira's vengeance soon. We're going to do what we should have done in the beginning." The men raised their eyebrows, guessing Fujioka's next words. "We're going after Haruka and were going to bring her back in one piece"

There was nodding of agreement all around and, as the lethal team strode away from the huddle, everyone heard Mimura's angry mutter.

"Her kidnapper won't be so lucky."

* * *

"Breath!" Mello instructed, furiously, "Just breath!"

Mello liked to think he was in control of his emotions, but, more often than he would admit, the impulsive, fiery side to him, which made him different to the Near's clinical machine-like disposition, made it's appearance. At the moment he was horrified at hoe badly out of his control the situation had got, and trying desperately not to think about how much worse it could get, if things didn't change soon.

When he'd thought his was prisoner was another of Kira's victims, he felt a part of him shut down and an icy chill grip his heart. That a young girl, who was most likely innocent, had been murdered wile in his care had accelerated his downwards spiral of hopelessness. Another death, which he should have been able to prevent. However, he couldn't explain or justify the rush of relief he felt when he realised his mistake, but it looked like his exultation might have been premature as Haruka Sato's feeble attempts to draw air into her lungs seemed to be growing weaker and weaker.

"C'mon, Sato. You need to sit up." Mello unsnapped one end of the cuff, which had attached Haruka's hand to the grate on the floor and pulled her into a sitting position. Half-dragging, half-carrying her across to lean up against the grey metal side of the truck, he tried again to communicate with the girl who seemed past even speaking. "Talk to me. What do you need? And _don't_ _you dare _say an inhaler!"

There was a split second when their gazes met, his bright, stormy glare and her glazed, streaming eyes locked together and a spark of electricity coursed through Mello. He felt Haruka focus on him for a brief second, looking as though she desperately wanted to speak, before her eyelids sank shut, her head lolled to the side and her shallow breathing finished in one rattling gasp.

There was no noise in the truck. Mello's face had gone almost as grey as the features of the lifeless, crumpled body he held in his arms.

As a child, he'd learned how it was to sit beside the only person who'd ever earned his devotion, knowing that they were about to be separated and there was nothing he could do about it. To see their eyes shut and their body still. He'd heard that last deathly intake of breath before, when he was five years old and had stood rooted to the spot, while no doctors thought to shove him from the dingy, chemical- smelling room.

When he felt the blue-tinged hand, which he hadn't noticed, grasping his sleeve, unclamp and fall to the floor, the barely audible sound of the feather-light impact seemed to bounce back and reverberated off the walls and snap Mello out of his reverie.

"No!" He whispered, the Mello, who never gave up and would do what ever it took, made his appearance, with a frightening force. "NO!"

The colour streamed back into his white cheeks and he lay Haruka down onto the floor. Then he took a deep breath, leant over and pressed his scarred lips to her unresponsive ones.

* * *

Haruka was swimming. She knew she must be swimming because she wasn't breathing.

"You can't breathe underwater, right?" she asked herself, before frowning slightly. Everything was an indiscernible eerie black too. "There's no light down here, I must be pretty deep. I should probably go up for air soon."

As she thought of air Haruka notices a muted pain in her chest, for the first time. Quickly, she made the decision that oxygen was definitely needed. "Now, which way is up?" When she could see no logical direction, she began to get feel a dull sense of worry through her fuzzy, clouded brain. Twisting and turning her head around, she was suddenly met with a shimmering, white beam, like a search light, penetrating the water. "A submarine," baffled, she began to move towards it, not pulling herself through the water, but as if she was being sucked in by a powerful magnet. Unable to change course, and overwhelmed by the need for air, she let herself float along, "Maybe they'll be able to point me in the right direction," she comforted herself. And besides, the closer she got to the white light, the duller the pain became and the calmer she felt.

Suddenly, when the beam was immanent, and the light nearly consumed her, it started mutating, shadows flickering across it, coming together to form a shape, until the surprisingly familiar silhouette of a young man appeared before her and a clear, relaxed voice rang in her ears.

"Long time, no see, Ruka"

"_That's really weird. I'm pretty sure you can't hear talking underwater_. _And I recognise that voice, I just can't remember..._" She trailed of as the man snapped her back to attention.

"Listen-up," he jerked her back to the present; "You haven't changed at all, daydreamer! This is important, 'kay? You can't stay here. You gotta go back, you hear me?

"_Go back? Back where?"_ she wondered

You made me a promise, you didn't know I could hear you but I've been keeping an eye on you these past years, and I heard. You said you'd avenge me, remember?"

Uncertainty flickered across Haruka's face; she remembered making some kind of promise – an important one…but when?

"This guy with the scar, he wants the same thing you do. Work with him! If you do, I know you can do it, Ruka. You can get him!" His tone changed, "Please? For me? We're so hurting, here. There are thousands of us, more every day! It's like we can't rest, not while Kira keeps going. "

Kira! Suddenly, memories bolted back to Haruka. A shattering call from the hospital, a cold hand, clutched in hers as she held back the tears burning her eyes, a marble grave, with a name engraved across it in bold letters. She struggled to recall through the haze her mind created, what was the name?

"_Who are you!_" Her voice was raspy, almost inaudible but she heard a chuckle from the dark man

"I can't believe you picked the one day you were going to get _kidnapped_ to leave you're inhaler at home! No. Scratch that. I _do_ believe it, that is just the kind of thing you always did, Sis. Now of you go!

As she flew backwards, away from the light, the name came back to her in a sensation like she'd been kicked in the ribs by a carthorse. "T-Taichi?" she cried, "_Taichi!_"

Then the air came back, Haruka's chest expanded and her eyes snapped open, into a world that wasn't unfocused and hazy. She could feel the chill of the floor, the soreness in her lungs and throat and, most surprisingly, she could feel, warm, rough lips, pressed tight to her own, and see fair hair, brushing the skin above her face gently.

The feel of the lips and hair disappeared, and a scarred, yet striking face peered down at her. "Sato? Can you hear me?"

In response, Haruka heaved herself to one side and was violently sick.

* * *

A/N – A gold star for anyone, who can remember who Taichi is. Any opinions? Anything? You know what to do.


	14. Take the Plunge

A/N – Um…whoops? Sorry about the temporary abandonment. To make up for it, I'll stop drivelling and get straight on with the chapter.

_Recap:_

_Matt glanced down at the still, silent figure, slumped in the seat next to him. The thin line of blood dripping from her forehead to her jaw and her general lack of screaming and struggles told him she must have been knocked unconscious when she hit her head. _

"_Deal with it later, Matt!" he commanded himself, glancing into his rear-view mirror, as bullets whistled around him and smashed circles in this windshield. "Right now, you've got bigger things to worry about!"_

Mother

_England, 2003 (Matt is 9)_

_T__he greying, moustached police officer, parked in an off-road and enjoying his coffee, did a double take when he caught the glimpse of a freckle-faced and grinning driver, who was perched on the edge of the seat so his small feet could reach the accelerator, and after a moments shock, sped of in hot pursuit of what was, unmistakably, a child in bright orange goggles, driving a black Rolls Royce down a quiet country road!_

_The following half-hour had resulted in the policeman following him through a picket fence, into a field of sheep, through a creek and finally screeching to a halt to narrowly avoid being having the bonnet of his car ripped off by the train which the kid had flown in front of a split second earlier. _

_The, still grinning, boy quickly made hi__mself scarce and, by the time the train had passed, and the road was visible once again, he was gone. _

Japan, 2013 (Matt is 19)

Matt's lips twitched in memory of his first car chase. Of course, Roger had been livid, and he'd spent the next six months paying for the repairs of both the fence and the scratches it'd inflicted on the rolls' glossy black paint job.

Also, the policeman had been so disturbed by the mysterious, disappearing child-driver, he'd become convinced it was the ghost of a road accident, and had had to take an extended leave of absence from the force so his shattered nerves could recover.

However, since that day Matt had recognised a talent within himself for getting out of scrapes. He'd managed to shake off plenty of trackers over the years and, despite the hail of bullets, which had peppered the windshield and the back of the beaten old car, these police were, in no way, the biggest threat he'd ever faced.

Unfortunately, this situation was different from the others. Every other time, the only factors involved had been Matt, the shadow and the road ahead. Never had he needed to spit out mouthfuls of the foul metallic liquid, which burned its way up his throat and pooled in his mouth, every ten or so seconds. Never, had numerous injuries, which seemed to cover the majority of his skin, drenched him in so much of his own blood that his head span and his skin faded to the colour of paper. Never, had he had to gasp to fill his aching lungs with air. And _never_ had he had to deal with an unconscious and beautiful girl, sprawled half on the passenger seat, half leaning into his side. It was very distracting.

A hissing sound followed by a clunk, informed Matt that one of the bullets had made a deadly impact with his right rear tire. His eyes flicked from side to side in agitation, looking for an escape route. He didn't have much time.

_Where are my goggle__s? _He suddenly thought, his focus failing him once again. The tinted plastic of normally helped him get into the zone, warped these intense chases until he could trick himself that they were just another game, easily defeated. In the dark night, the glaring beams of the streetlamps whizzed around him like searchlights and everything seemed far too real. A constant reminder that the wailing sirens belonged to real cops, that a single well aimed bullet from one of them would mean and end to his life. _Oh right…my pocket. Why would I stick them in there? _He wondered, his thoughts disjointed and unfocused, as he glanced down at the dark hoodie and the small goggle shaped lump inside, then grinned in spite of himself. _Ha, I remember…I was being inconspicuous…what a joke…ha! _He laughed a humourless laugh. In his current situation, he might as well have a light-up sign saying _come and get me _on the roof of the exhausted, slowing vehicle, which was currently serving as his stylish getaway car.

"Uggn…" A quiet, confused groan snapped Matt's focus back to the pretty Japanese nurse, slumped against him. Shiori. His hostage.

"_No jumping from the car this time, Matt buddy…can't take her with you and…," _He told himself while he struggled to make his bleary thoughts come together coherently,_ "…you leave her behind and she's good as dead. Besides…think my body's had enough jumping out of cars…to last a while" _

Matt racked his brains for a plan. He knew if he carried on like this he'd likely pass out at the wheel. If he got into a crash, it wouldn't end well. He knew from experience.

Just as they neared the Yamasaki Bridge and Matt's eyelids were drooping shut from exhaustion and blood loss and another, more painful, memory slammed its way through his fading mind.

_The__ dark mass of cloud rolling in from the east made them aware that a storm was on its way._

_The first __heavy drops of water fell and they ran the last ten feet back to the car._

"_D'you like your new goggles, Mail, hon?" Maya Jeevas asked her scowling, freckled six year old as they clambered into their badly parked, beat-up Dodge and chucked all but one of their purchases into the back seat._

"_I liked my old ones, Mom! Besides, these ones are _orange!_ Everything's gonna look weird. _I'll_ look weird." Mail retorted, frowning. The aggrieved expression was so out of place on the young boy's face that Maya couldn't suppress the laughter bubbling up in her throat, resulting in him looking even more indignant. "It's not funny, Mommy!"_

_She quickly got her giggles under control and reached across to ruffle her son's static mane of chocolate brown hair, so like her own, __"Oh sweetie, who cares if you look weird! No one will even be able to see your face under all that hair. Time for a cut I think." She contemplated aloud._

_Seeing wide eyes on Mail's round face become horrified, appalled at the suggestion, Maya threw him a peace offering. "I'll take you to the pool tomorrow, test out those new goggles? But only if you promise to behave yourself at the hairdressers this time," she shuddered recalling the many, disastrous past trips. "You're getting big now and that hair makes you look even bigger. You're way too young to be catching your own Mom up?"_

"'_K Mommy." Mail yawned his consent and snuggled down in his seat for the long journey home. After debating between the option of occupying his time by taking a nap or staring and the now heavy downpour churning the bleak river that streamed though a ditch beside the road, he opted for the less tedious option, curled up and shut his eyes as the car pulled out of the department store car park. _

"_That's my boy," Maya replied, before her tone of voice suddenly changed to exasperated, "What's that idiot doing? Swerving all over the place, like that. Drunk, irresponsible MORON! She pressed a sharp blast of her car horn and Mail creaked open his eyes. He was met with a view of a shiny red sports car, veering and skidding towards them on the slippery roads, "HEY! _Watch where you're going, buddy!" _she yelled, her pitch rising in panic_, "_Mail,_ look ou-!"

_The impact of the collision sent both Mother and son flying forward. Mail was restrained by his child's car seat__ and was jerked back. The inertia nearly made him throw up but his bright mind didn't miss the sickening crack as his mother's skull crashed into the steering wheel. The old Dodge slid forward, off the black tarmac towards the rapid flowing river. It came to a rest with the front half of the car hanging precariously out over the grey, churning waters. _

_Mail looked sideways, at his still mother, limp in her seat, her glasses shattered and her blank face covered in something sticky and red._

"_Mom?"_

_The car tilted._

"_Mom!"_

_They rolled forward._

"_MOMMY!"_

_The waters consumed them._

Matt, jerked awake, letting out a half-yell half-sob and discovered his face was wet with a clear liquid that was flowing from his deep eyes rather than from his gashes. Angrily, he wiped the crystal tears from his eyes and let the ever-present hate consume him, a luxury he rarely allowed himself.

There had been no fatalities in the horrific crash, which had Matt leaping up out of his bed, screaming and terrified, every night until he was eleven and still made regular appearances in his dreams.

Within seconds, a crowd of pedestrians and other shoppers had formed a horrified semi-circle around the, still visible, trunk of the car. A few had waded into the water and pulled Maya and Mail from the rapidly flooding front seats, just moments before the hulking dodge was swept away by the tearing currents and smashed into a hidden rock like tin foil.

Loud, wailing ambulances, filled with paramedics that seemed like giants to Mail, were on the scene within minutes. They loaded the freezing, shell shocked child into one red and white van and his unconscious, bleeding mother into the other.

Maya Jeevas, the doting single mother of a freckled, little genius boy, was still lying in a hospital bed. She hadn't so much as opened her eyes since that day. Transferred to one of the best hospitals in the USA, courteousy of Quillish Wammy, Machines breathed for her, nurses fed her and hundreds of neurologists examined her before shaking their heads and agreeing that she would probably never wake up.

The drunk driver had sped off with an obvious dent in the front of his car. Either he'd been too inebriated to notice the crash or he just didn't care. He was pulled over by police and arrested within half an hour. For a while it seemed like justice would be done, then the oily and money-grabbing judge had licked his lips, pocketed a sizeable check from the drivers multi-millionaire father, and decided that, as there was no reliable witness to say that he was to blame, he couldn't send him to jail. Condescendingly, he'd informed Mail that the testimony of a six year old, prodigy or not, just couldn't be trusted.

Matt clenched his fist, digging his nails into his palm to vent his frustration. His thoughts were coherent enough in his hate of the man who'd sent his mother's car tumbling into a raging river and the vile, immoral man who'd set him free.

The idea snuck up on Matt and hit him like a bolt of lightening. His expression turned from aggrieved and murderous to wide eyed, like a child, realising that he had the solution to an impossible problem. He knew what he had to do. It sickened him. It terrified him. He hated knowing that the only way he could get out of this situation was by reliving the painful past.

_Do it Matt_, he told himself. _Just do it. _Glancing down at the crumpled girl by his side, he felt a twinge of guilt. _Shiori. I'm sorry you got dragged into this. _Then he took a shallow shuddering breath and twisted his steering wheel as far to the left as it would go.

About half way across the Yamazaki Bridge, the suspect and his hostage smashed their way through the flimsy roadside barrier, and plummeted twenty feet into a streaming, inky flow of opaque water.

Superintendant Nakagawa could only gaze down in fury as the car sank below the waters. It didn't come up.

For a moment, as the water gushed in through the splintered windshield, Matt was a six year old boy again, locked in his seat; unable to do anything but sit, frozen, as he and the woman next to him faced their immanent deaths. He was running on pure adrenaline now. His energy was nearly gone and he felt his eyes rolling back.

Suddenly, a voice, clear and familiar as it had been thirteen years again, whispered in his ear. _"Get out of the car, Mail. You've got to survive this…Both of you_…"

His head whipped to the side, searching in vain for the speaker, clinging to the impossible hope that, somehow she was there, with him, ready with a Band-Aid for his cuts and a gentle hand to help him up. For a second he though he saw a female silhouette in the murky water but when he reached his had out, it disappeared it the darkness.

Shiori's dark eyes flickered open then widened. "Wha-Where…" The rush of cold water had shocked her awake and, disorientated as she was, her body tingled with electric jolts of fear. Her terrified eyes slid to the brilliant, grief stricken ones of the man next to her and through her panic and uncertainty she recognised him…and remembered. "M-Matt? What's…what's going on? _Are we going to die_?"

The question sent Matt reeling away from his search of the shadowy waters. Despite the deadly circumstances around him, he felt almost offended. There was nothing heroic about dying in a sinking car with his hostage and, after all he'd been through in a matter of hours, he was _not_ going to go out like this.

"_You know what to do, honey." _The words faded to silence leaving the two alone in the car. But it was enough. Matt had his plan.

_Yeah, Mom. I do._

"Hold on to me." Matt ordered calmly, and to her own surprise, Shiori felt herself wrap her arms around her kidnapper's waist. His face appeared radiant with determination for a second before he summoned the last of his strength and drove his fist though the cracked glass in front of him.

The icy wetness surged around them, temporarily overwhelming them. It was all they could do not to cry out. Then Matt dragged Shiori and himself out of the gap that was left where the windshield had been moments before. Still locked in each others arms, they kicked out for the light above them, praying they'd make the surface

A/N – A month late is better than no chapter at all. Am I right? And it's longer than average.

Thanks for reading. Please review, even if it's corrections or improvements.


	15. Everybody Screws Up Sometimes

A/N – Sorry for the long wait. As some of you know I was suffering from major stupidity in that I had no idea how to finish the story. Fortunately (drum roll please) I have now scraped together a confusing rough plan type thingy, which just might work. And, as a reward for putting up with my bad timing and awful artistic temperament (a.k.a. Laziness), which causes me to go off and sulk when my projects become too difficult, I am introducing some new/old characters into the mix! Just like I do _way_ too often, anyway. No jokes. I've actually lost count of how man OC's I've stuck in here.

So without further adieu, I will shut up my crazy person rambling and give you the next chapter of Four Lives!

* * *

_Recap:_

_Late that night, Light met with Takada, at her safe house, under the pretence of confirming her safety. Once they were alone, he handed her a note._

_Kiyomi, what Mello did today was more than just an attack on you. It was an attack on Kira. I want you to order some of your bodyguards, with the exception of Lidner, to track him down and, along with any accomplices, kill him. _

* * *

_"What are our instructions?" Inada queried, eyes glinting with anticipation._

_Fujioka scrunched up his forehead in contemplation, then he spoke, "The police are going after the guy with the smoke bombs and judging by all that blood…" he indicated the dimly lit entrance to a nearby alley, the crimson spots on the ground staining the pale concrete, "…well, it doesn't look like he's going to be too much of a bother. He'll feel Kira's vengeance soon. We're going to do what we should have done in the beginning." The men raised their eyebrows, guessing Fujioka's next words. "We're going after Haruka and were going to bring her back in one piece"_

_There was nodding of agreement all around and, as the lethal team strode away from the huddle, everyone heard Mimura's angry mutter._

_"Her kidnapper won't be so lucky."_

* * *

Everybody Screws Up Sometimes

_A few days ago:_

_Stephen Gevanni crouched in the changing rooms of a small local gym, poised at the entrance of Teru Mikami's locker, hand outstretched and beads of perspiration rolling down his face. He hadn't moved an inch in twenty minutes except for the trembling of his fingers._

"_This is stupid," he told himself, "C'mon!" A couple of inches forward and his clammy skin would come into contact with the Death Note; the most powerful murder weapon the world had ever seen, and the task Near had sent him on would be finished. It might as well have been a mile._

"_It's s__imple," Gevanni tried to convince himself, before gulping and giving in to the feelings of danger. The mission came with a small snag. If there were a Shinigami attached to the note, then it was extremely likely that it would kill him the minute his fingers brushed the black book. _

_Gevanni thought of his family, back home in Washington. His mom and younger brother needed the cheques he sent back each month. This job had allowed him to pull them out of the rundown gutter they'd lived in, surrounded by police cars rushing down the street every other night in response to the scores of break-ins and knife fights. But without him, they couldn't pay the rent on their new home, everything would go to peices and they'd end up back where they'd started. How could he leave them in that? And Katie was still waiting for him. He thought back to their last night together and his rashly whispered promise in her ear._

"_I swear I'll come back."_

_The clock was ticking. Ever punctual, Mikami would wrap up his work-out and return to the changing rooms in less than five minutes. If Gevanni was going to do this, it would have to be now. For forty nail-biting seconds, deafeningly divided by the echoing click of the clock on the chipped paint wall, he steeled himself to reach out and grab it. On forty-one, he slammed the cool, metal door shut and fled the room._

* * *

"_Gevanni?" Near's calm, detached voice sounded slightly cracked due to the static from laptop signal, which he was using to communicate with one of his most trusted pawns. "Is it done?"_

_He waited in silence for an answer._

"_..."_

"_Mr Gevanni? What's happened?"_

"_...I'm sorry, Near...I couldn't do it." Near's storm coloured eyes widened in surprise. "I-I have my family to think of! If I were gone, then my mother-"_

"_That's enough Mr Gevanni." The icy voice held no hint of anger or disappointment or any other emotion. His bitterness was revealed in his next words. "I see that I was mistaken to entrust this task to you." Then he sighed. Gevanni's reaction had been only human. He himself had miscalculated his team's ability to go against their survival instinct. His eyes flickered back to Rester and Lidner, gauging, before rejecting either of them as a possibility to touch and alter the Death Note. "_No. There's no way I can know they wouldn't react in exactly the same way as Gevanni_," he deliberated, "_This requires someone completely committed to bringing down Kira, with the mental capacity to see the bigger picture. I'd go myself if my survival weren't so important to the case. But who...?"

_Suddenly, the machine like analytical processing of his mind brought forth an ideal solution. The corners of his mouth turned up and his face evolved into his unsettling grin._

"_Gevanni, please continue to observe Mikami and look for any suspicious behaviour. Anything that would be out of his normal routine." Carefully, he set a tiny rounded figurine with long black hair to the side and picked up another. One clad in black from head to toe, with miniature, dotted, blue eyes. "Rester, Lidner." He didn't turn to face them, but his quiet voice immediately had the undivided attention of his two remaining subordinates. "I have a new job for you."_

* * *

Present Day:

Fujioka and Inada sat side by side in the front of an unremarkable, range rover. They were pursuing a tip-off from a motorist who'd reported seing a white man driving a truck, behaving suspiciously, and suddenly swerving of road into the woods. The woman had been concerned, after all the press surrounding the terrorist activity from "peculiarly dressed western men" at NHN studios, and had informed the police. With several remaining members of Takada's personal bodyguard observing the police radio, they'd soon had all the information they needed and were now speeding down the motorway in search of any traces left behind by the, man.

The other men selected to go after Haruka and her kidnapper followed behind in a similarly inconspicuous vehicle, which they'd commandeered from a local car dealer. Their mission was now one which required stealth and the last thing Fujioka wanted was to spook this dangerous fugitive and end up with the poor girl being killed. As a result, the flashy black Mercedes had been dispensed with.

Fujioka's eyes slid of the road momentarily to the man next to him and were surprised to see his companion's forehead creased with stress and his fist clenched tightly in his lap. "You feeling okay, Inada?" He queried, more out of curiosity than concern, for Inada was a man who rarely showed a human side, and kept his personal life and his work _very_ separate. "Please tell me you're not about to throw up all over the upholstery. We do intend to give these cars _back_ to the dealer when we've caught up with this guy."

"It's not that. I-I'm not a huge fan of cars. And we're driving pretty fast." His face was ashen, in sharp contrast with his black shades.

"Cars? What a wimpy phobia!" Fujioka kept his tone playful, but secretly he was curious. What could make a guy afraid of driving?

As expected the shaking man riled against the teasing. "You wouldn't say that if you'd seen what I'd seen! You and me, we're not so different Fujioka. We both screwed up when we were young.

Even more curious, Fujioka kept pushing the buttons he knew would rile Inada, "Perfect Good Boy Inada, in trouble with the law. You're not the type, Pal. I don't believe it.

Anger coursed through Inada. "You don't believe me? You think I'd make up that I all but orphaned a six year old kid when I got so wasted on vacation that I drove right into his car!" He snarled, then as the red faded from his eyes and he saw Fujioka's stunned face, he realised what it was he'd just said and turned away. He leaned against the window and shut his eyes, battling against the nausea that came with his terror.

There was a long moment of silence, during which Fujioka felt something akin to pity for his colleague. They were in the same boat. Both given another chance by Kira. Both with no room for screw-ups.

He was saved from the need to say anything when his mobile went off in his pocket, breaking the awkward silence. "This is Fujioka," he answered, "Did you see something?"

"_We just passed a gap in the trees about fifty metres back. It looks big enough for a truck to pass through,"_ Shimizu's serious voice replied, _"It was difficult to tell but I think some of the branches around it were snapped. What are our orders?"_

Fujioka immediately recognised this as a trail worth following. He berated himself for letting his conversation with Inada distract him and steer his attention away, causing him to miss this vital sign. "Turn around." He decided, adrenaline levels shooting up. "We'll overtake you then head in. When we're fifty metres down the path, we'll park and then continue on foot. We can't let our engines give us away." He grinned, "Nice work, Shimizu. Were one step closer to saving Haruka."

* * *

A/N – I know it's short. I'm sorry!

There was more but I'm doing it is a separate chapter because it was just too confusing otherwise. Please review and let me know what you think of this new chapter.


	16. Saviours

_Recap:_

_Then the air came back, Haruka's chest expanded and her eyes snapped open, into a world that wasn't unfocused and hazy. She could feel the chill of the floor, the soreness in her lungs and throat and, most surprisingly, she could feel, warm, rough lips, pressed tight to her own, and see fair hair, brushing the skin above her face gently._

_The feel of the lips and hair disappeared, and a scarred, yet striking face peered down at her. "Sato? Can you hear me?"_

_In response, Haruka heaved herself to one side and was violently sick._

* * *

"_We just passed a gap in the trees about fifty metres back. It looks big enough for a truck to pass through," Shimizu's serious voice replied, "It was difficult to tell but I think some of the branches around it were snapped. What are our orders?"_

"_Turn around." He decided, adrenaline levels shooting up. "We'll overtake you then head in. When we're fifty metres down the path, we'll park and then continue on foot. We can't let our engines give us away." He grinned, "Nice work, Shimizu. Were one step closer to saving Haruka."_

_"Rester, Lidner." He didn't turn to face them, but his quiet voice immediately had the undivided attention of his two remaining subordinates. "I have a new job for you."_

* * *

Saviours

From somewhere deep inside himself, Mello summoned a spark of chivalry, which anyone who'd lived with Quilish Whammy, for any amount of time ,couldn't fail to have tucked away somewhere in the recesses of their minds. As Haruka Sato retched and emptied the contents of her stomach onto the grate built into the floor of his getaway truck, he leaned forward and held her short, black hair out of the way. He also forced his gaze away from her slender body, where the sheet had fallen away, and revealed a stretch of smooth pale skin.

"Yuck." Haruka murmured as she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and tasted the acrid vomit. Suddenly, she felt the warmth of another person crouching behind her, holding back her hair. "Thanks," she muttered to Mello, and then winced when she felt how sore her throat was, an after affect of her near fatal asthma attack. "_Now what brought that on?" _She wondered,_ "Oh right." _Her gaze collided with the ocean eyes of the man next to her_, "I was kidnapped. Fantastic."_

"_This guy with the scar...wants the same thing you do...work with him..."_

Taichi's words reverberated through her mind like an echo. But what did she want? The words seemed to be slipping away, but she recalled their urgency. "_What could me and this deranged kidnapper nut-job possibly _both_ want?"_

"_We can't rest, not while Kira keeps going."_

"_Kira?"_ Surprise erupted inside her. _"Taichi wants me and my kidnapper to work together to find Kira? Maybe...Maybe the whole thing was just a bizarre hallucination! But what a thing to Hallucinate. And even if it was real and my dead brother did somehow come to me in a vision, what are we supposed to do? I don't even know this guy! What if-"_

Haruka's chaotic inner monologue was broken off by a leather-clad hand suddenly resting on her shoulder, making her jump. "Here." The man held out in his hand a bottle of water. It was lukewarm and half empty but it suddenly struck her how thirsty she was. Looking at the drink like it was an oasis in the middle of a dessert, she took a long gulp. "How do you feel?" The concern in his voice surprised even him.

Haruka gave a dry, sarcastic laugh. "Oh, I'm just great! I mean, it's not like I just got kidnapped or stripped naked or nearly died or anything! Because if any of those things _had_ happened then this day might really suck! But don't you worry. I'm having an absolute _blast!_" At this point her exhausted lungs overcame her and she collapsed into a fit of racking coughs.

Mello was stunned into silence. Then he smiled crookedly, one corner of his mouth turning up. "Well, all that yelling seems to have got some of the colour back into your face at any rate. You looked like a ghost for a while back there. Gave me a fright, Sato" His tone was casual, not letting on how scared he'd really been.

"How do you know my name?" She demanded.

"I heard it on the radio." Her eyebrows rose. "Is it so surprising? You're all over the News, Haruka Sato. If it makes you feel any better, you've got most of Japan's police force out looking for you."

The adrenaline levels dropped and Haruka's eyes widened fearfully, while mentally kicking herself once again for yelling at her captor. She was a mouse who'd run out of her hidey hole and attacked a cat, now with nowhere else to go. "Are you going to kill me?" Her pitch rose. "Dump me in a ditch and make your getaway?" She looked down at the diminished water bottle in her hand and a chill of fear spread through her heart. "Poison?"

Suddenly, the man was right in front of her. His scarred face an inch from hers. "_No!_" Mello hissed, his voice held no trace of doubt, and somehow, though he sounded deadly, she believed him. "You've done _nothing_ to deserve death. Besides, do you really think I'd have given you CPR just now, if I'd wanted you dead?"

"Y-you gave me CPR?" Distracted, Haruka's hand unconsciously went to her lips and her cheeks flushed. "I can't believe I just got kissed by a man whose name I don't even know." She pondered aloud and then blushed even harder, realising what she'd just said.

"It's Mello," He told her, simply, not even knowing why he said it.

"What?"

"Mell-o" He repeated, "My name? Two syllables, five letters. It's not hard"

"Your name's Mello?"

"It's what people call me."

"Okay Mello. What do you want with me?" Haruka steeled herself, prepared for another bipolar mood swing at her next topic of topic. "Earlier, you asked me if I was working with Kira. What have I got to do with him?"

"I don't want _you _for anything." The anger, evident as he spoke, was directed at his failed plan, but this wasn't obvious to Haruka, worried that she'd unintentionally turned his rage onto her. "You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. _Obviously_, I was trying to get Kiyomi Takada. What are you anyway? Her bodyguard?"

"Something like that." She nodded warily in assent, "But I'm still confused, what does kidnapping Kiyomi Takada have to with Kira. I know she's his spoke's person, but why-"

"It's...complicated. I've been working here in Japan to bring down Kira. I needed Takada to solve the case. Or, actually, to let the case be solved. I wasn't expecting to live through the night to wrap it up myself." He interjected.

Haruka felt her temper flare up; outraged that a young, healthy man had been willing to _kill himself_ so Kira would die. Her dark eyes shone. "_Why_ would you do that? What could make you care so much about _Kira _that you'd throw your life away?" He looked up fiercely, their eyes locked. She suddenly understood. She recognised in Mello what she saw reflected in her own black eyes whenever she looked in a mirror. "I see...you lost someone to Kira, too, didn't you?"

Mello ducked his head, refusing to allow her to see the anguish on his face as the long suppressed memories of L and Watari flooded his mind. His idol and his father figure. The only people who'd made him feel like he was worth something since Father Kheel had died.

Haruka caught a glimpse of the sadness in Mello's face before he turned away, and felt her heart swell with pity. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. It's just that I know how you feel. My older brother Taichi was murdered by Kira a couple of years ago. He was convicted of raping a young girl. They'd met in a club, had a dance and later, she was walking through a dark alley and some guy attacked her. It was dark. She couldn't see his face and when the police found traces of Taichi on her clothes...well, that was that." Haruka felt tears prickling behind her eyes. This was the first time she'd ever told anyone the story. "My parents had passed away a few years before and I was still at school. Taichi was a musician; he didn't earn enough to pay for a decent lawyer. The whole case was settled pretty quickly and he was sentenced to five years in prison. He'd only been there a month when he collapsed in the courtyard. A sudden and inexplicable heart attack. Two weeks after his funeral some new evidence came up, a video tape of Taichi leaving the club at the same time the rape was supposed to have happened" A crystal droplet rolled down her face and her voice cracked with emotion. "It was too late to save him though."

The pain of that time had felt like a hole had been stabbed in Haruka's heart. Burning. Agonising. Time had eased the hurt to a dull, but constant ache but she knew she would never be able to forgive the police for their failure to prove Taichi's innocence in time to save his life.

The truck was silent. Both thinking over what Haruka had said.

Then Mello spoke up, "When I eight, I was adopted by a man called...," Mello flicked through his mind for an alias, even in this moment of honesty, unable to compromise the safety of the young children still at Whammy's house by revealing their identities, "William Walker. When I was a little older Kira's reign began and one of my, I guess you could call him my brother. But he wasn't really. He was my...my mentor, my hero. I wanted nothing like I wanted to be like him. He travelled to Japan to find Kira and bring him to justice. Walker went with him. A few months after that they were both killed. Both by cardiac arrest. I travelled to Japan to finish his mission and defeat Kira but..." He trailed off. There was nothing more to say.

The air was heavy with the grief of the two people. Mello closed his eyes. When he came to Japan, it was with one goal. To defeat Kira before Near and become L's _true_ successor. Now, he'd never felt further from his target. It was as though he was running a marathon up an escalator, moving away from the end every time he stumbled.

Unexpectedly, he felt, through the leather of his gloves, a warm, gentle hand clutching his own. He squeezed back.

"And, somehow I'm I part of it." Haruka spoke her thoughts aloud. Passionate and determined, she continued. "I didn't want to be kidnapped by you and I guess you wanted Kiyomi Takada, not me. Now, I don't understand why, but I think we've been put together for a reason." Haruka steeled herself, suddenly sure she was doing the right thing. "Working with the police got me no nearer to avenging my brother or any of Kira's other victims, so...I want to work with you!"

"Why would you want to stay with me? Did you forget that I _kidnapped _you!"

"Think about it Mello!" Haruka sat up excited, clutching both of his hands in her own. "All I've wanted since Taichi was murdered is to avenge him, but nothing worked, the police didn't want me! Now I'm mysteriously stuck with a detective who'd give up his life for the Kira case! These things don't just happen! Please, let me help?

Mello paused, considering this crazy proposition. On one hand, if she was Kira's spy, this could be her attempt to find any others working with him, and he didn't want to be responsible for Matt's death as well as his own. On the other she seemed honest, and her story about her brother had touched him more deeply than he wanted to admit. Also, despite his cynical exterior, his religious upbringing had given him the belief that the things around him happened for a reason. _Could this girl have been sent to me?_ He wondered.

Finally, he made his decision. "For now, we're stuck together. If you do exactly as I say, you can help."

Haruka slumped back down, exhausted her impassioned speech had put more strain on her weakened lungs than was good for them, and she knew, without her inhaler, she was just a time bomb, waiting to go off. And to make matters worse, the cold night air was causing her to shiver. "Thank you."

The door flew open.

* * *

The five men stalked closer to the delivery truck, which was concealed in a web of trees and branches. They had parked their cars and trekked down the beaten path, worn and covered in bracken from years of disuse. Following the trail of broken tree limbs and disturbed fallen leaves, they were silent as a funeral procession.

When the vehicle loomed into view, Fujioka signalled Mimura, Inada, Souma and Shimizu to a halt. A kind of excited nervousness swept through him as he realised he wasn't prepared for this moment. Up until now, the entire hunt had been focused on finding Haruka and her kidnapper however, now that they were within his grasp, he had no idea what to do.

The team was solely comprised of bodyguards. Their job required them to _prevent _hostage situations, but these circumstances were obviously well past the point where that could be done. Resolving them was an aspect of his job there was little need to consider but he had seen enough cop shows and news broadcasts to know that, if they busted in there, guns blazing, the kidnapper might kill Haruka. "But what else can I do?" he thought.

He made up his mind. This required a stealthier approach and the instant elimination of and threat. "Okay boys," He beckoned his team to him so they would be able to hear his low whisper, "Surprise is our greatest weapon. Shimizu and Inada, you will stay here as back up, while the rest of us move forward and ambush the truck. When you see the kidnapper, you shoot first. Remember we have no idea how dangerous this guy is."

Each of the men was grim faced. The thrill of the hunt had reached its peak. Now, they were in was a situation, which could easily end in the death of a young girl. Each bodyguard felt a responsibility to save her and knew they were walking a fine line between success and failure.

They moved like ghosts through the melee of tangled roots and scatted twigs until they were close enough to touch the icy metal surface of the back door of the truck.

Muffled voices emanated from beyond the barrier, one deep and masculine, the other was obviously female, her sentences punctuated by her laboured breathing, as though she had just run a race_. Or fought off an attacker._ Fujioka thought grimly. His vision clouded red and he drew his gun. Souma and Mimura followed suit and readied themselves for their leader's signal. He raised his left hand and began lowering his fingers in a countdown. 3...2...1...

The door flew open.

A wraith-like Haruka sat, wrapped up in a white sheet, leaning against the wall at the back off the truck, her position blocking a scarred, blond man they could only assume was her kidnapper. Both sets of eyes were wide with astonishment.

"Miss Sato!" Fujioka bellowed, "Get Down!" He levelled his gun behind her at the kidnapper, who was apparently unarmed. She remained motionless. "_Move!"_

* * *

Haruka jerked her temporarily paralysed body into motion. But, instead of flinging herself to the ground out of the way of the barrage of bullets, she shakily pulled herself onto her knees and held out her arms, shielding Mello. "Stop." She told Fujioka, an imposing man, who she'd recognised as one of her bodyguards from that evening, and the two men behind him, Mimura and Souma, evenly, "Put your guns down."

"What are you _doing_, girl?" Fujioka shouted, his voice growing louder as the situation grew more and more out of hand.

_Good Question._ Haruka considered. _Why am I protecting the man who abducted me and stuck me in the back of a truck. _But, as much as her common sense told her she should be running in to the arms of the saviours while Mello sat motionless behind her, she could no more leave Mello at their mercy than she could fly. Her very being was horrified by the idea of leaving him there, this man who she'd been talking to for barely an hour, and yet felt more connected with, than any other person she knew . "You'll kill him!" she cried.

Suddenly, leather clad hands came down on her shoulders. "Move Sato. I'm not having you get shot being my shield!" Resigned to his fate, Mello attempted to push her away from him but she simply turned and wrapped her arms around him, clinging to him with surprising strength for a girl, who'd died that day. "Get away!" He grabbed her by the waist and tried to pry an arm from around his neck.

"No! I'm not leaving you to die!"

Fujioka felt a sheen of sweat start to cover his face. All three men were angling their guns, trying to find a position where they would be able to hit Mello, without risking Haruka.

_What is this? Stockholm syndrome already? _Fujioka floundered, _and he's _protecting _her? Damn it! Their making a fool out of me. _His patience with Haruka diminished as he saw her struggle with the blond man to remain at his side. Souma and Mimura were both looking to him, at a loss of what to do. "Mimura! Get her out of our way! I don't care if you have to drag her!"

Mimura started forward but before he had gotten halfway to the battling pair, a deep thrumming sound rent the air, causing all five people in the truck to look skyward, temporarily distracted. As it grew louder, Mello was the first to recognise the sound of spinning blades. "A...helicopter?" And sure enough a silver chopper appeared over a line of trees and hovered over the clearing, like an ominous black cloud. A rope ladder skimmed the grass and a loud voice boomed down at them from a megaphone. "Will the three men at the door of the truck back away from the exit! _Back away_! We _are_ armed and we _will_ open fire if you do not comply!" To prove this point they released a piercing volley into the night sky.

"Back off men. Head for the trees." Fujioka ordered before turning back to Haruka, anger and a glint of betrayal evident in his eyes, "You could have been on your way home by now, Haruka. Well, you've made your bed, now you can lay in it!" the three men backed away to the trees, where Inada and Shimizu stood, open mouthed and guns half drawn.

The voice reverberated through the air again "The two of you remaining, get to the ladder. You're coming with us."

Haruka loosened her arms from around Mello's neck. "Who is that? What do they want with us?"

Mello's expression was dark and seemed somewhat irritated. "I have a pretty good idea." He stood and offered her his hand, "Come on."

Haruka's legs were still shaky and collapsed under her the minute she stood. "I don't think I can..."

Her voice trailed off as she found herself scooped up and travelling smoothly towards the rope ladder, strong, wiry arms under her back and legs.

They rose up, away from the ground, while Takada's bodyguard's were unable to move because of the terrifying machine guns trained on them. Haruka clung to the rungs, knuckles turning white, and Mello positioned himself behind her, anchoring both of them to the ladder incase her unsteady limbs gave out again. The trees became smaller and smaller as the pair reached dizzying heights.

Finally, Mello and Haruka both collapsed onto the floor and came face to face with a pair of sturdy, black boots, which led up two dark trouser legs, a bulletproof jacket and ended with a serious, lightly lined, grey eyed face.

"Good to see you again, Mello," the man spoke with a broad American accent, a gentler version of the booming orders from the megaphone. "I guess I'll introduce myself again for Miss Sato's benefit. How d'you do, Miss?" He offered a weathered hand to help her up. "M' names Anthony Rester of the SPK."

* * *

A/N - Yay! A nice long chapter. Hope you've enjoyed the story so far. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW!


	17. The Batcave

Recap:

His face appeared radiant with determination for a second before he summoned the last of his strength and drove his fist though the cracked glass in front of him.

The icy wetness surged around them, temporarily overwhelming them. It was all they could do not to cry out. Then Matt dragged Shiori and himself out of the gap that was left where the windshield had been moments before. Still locked in each other's arms, they kicked out for the light above them, praying they'd make the surface.

* * *

The Batcave

Matt's lungs were burning for oxygen; the kicking of his feet growing was getting weaker by the second. It seemed as though the wreckage of the car was a lifetime behind them and he and Shiori were literally aging being tossed about and clinging to each other in the vicious current. In reality, each second they struggled brought them closer to death.

The darkness of the night sky provided no clue as to which way was up and which was down and, disorientated by the dizzying speeds at which they were being dragged along, and by his increasing blood loss, it seemed as if the two might as well have been shoving against a brick wall.

"_Why Mom?" _Matt's hazy thoughts queried, disappointment resonating through him, "_What was the point of getting us out of the car...if we were going to die anyway?"_

"_Matt," _The familiar lulling voice resounded in his ears,_ "Take my hand."_

A softly, glowing apparition materialised in the rippling water, her hand reached out and became illuminated by a tunnel of bright, glittering whiteness coming from behind her. Matt felt the fight go out of his exhausted body and prepared himself for his damaged lungs to fill with the murky, cold water. Which was worse? The pain of death or the ache in his heart that told him he had failed.

"_How cliché,"_ the corner of Matt's mouth twitched in a half smirk, half grimace as he reached out for his mother's fading hand, overwhelmed by tiredness_, "I'm 'going into the light'." _He felt his companion begin to still in his arms_, and squeezed her hand, the only comfort he could offer her now, "I'm...so sorry...Shiori...I'm not...a...hero..."_

* * *

"_WHERE ARE THEY_?" roared Nakagawa, scarlet in the face, at his agitated police force. The officers were leaning away from the spray of spittle flying at them as they endured a screaming hail of commands and general obscenities from their enraged superintendent. All except one, white faced man, who barely seemed to notice.

Everyone had let out a collective gasp when the car they'd been chasing broke through the barrier of the bridge and tumbled into the churning black river bellow but only one had felt guilt like a punch to the gut.

Mochizuki hadn't stopped replaying the past hours in his mind, checking off each of his slip-ups on an invisible checklist:

Following the trail of blood _on his own without telling snyone where he was going_. _Check._

Attempting to arrest the suspect while he was in close proximity to a civilian. _Check._

Fumbling attempt to negotiate the unfortunate girl's release. _Check._

_Giving up his gun to the kidnapper_. _Check._

Four ridiculously _stupid_ schoolboy slip-ups. Mochizuki knew he had failed, and failed badly, and that, as a result, an innocent young woman was most-likely lying dead at the bottom of a river. He wanted to rage and cry, but he kept his poker face, and pressed his lips together as his grief devoured him, trying to retain the last bit of dignity he had.

No one had said anything to him yet. After being yanked into the backseat of the police car by the scruff of his neck, like a badly-behaved puppy he'd been forgotten in the urgency of the chase. However, Mochizuki wasn't naive enough to think he was going to get off with a slap on the wrist this time. Nobody had ever seen Nakagawa in a rage quite like this before.

Superintendent Nakagawa of the Japanese police could feel the situation slipping out of his control. The kidnapped girl was still missing. The kidnapper had vanished. The accomplice and his hostage had just plunged off a bridge, most likely to their deaths. Everything that could have gone wrong had gone spectacularly wrong. "On my watch," he muttered to himself, despairingly, "How could this happen on my watch. The media'll tear me to pieces! I'll lose _everything_!" His voice had risen to bellow and he swore violently. Through the red haze clouding his eyes he searched through the astonished eyes of each of his underlings as they watched him fall apart. Every man looked concerned; they'd stopped rushing about and talking into radio's, trying to salvage the situation. They were all at a loss of what to do. Every man's face pleaded with him for leadership. All except Mochizuki.

All at once, the boiling rage just seemed to drain right out of Nakagawa. His face slumped and became very white, and he lurched forward like a zombie, until he was stood, directly in front of Mochizuki, who slowly looked up at him, his eyes glazed.

A hush fell over the huddle of men as Nakagawa reached out wrapped his fingers around the collar of Mochizuki's shirt. He pulled the younger man face close to his and hissed in his ear, so softly that the others had no hope of overhearing, "You _will_ fix this, you stupid little man." He grinned cruelly, "This is a result of your screw-up. I want both of those men and those two girls _alive_ very soon or the press will hear all about the _fumbling _policeman whose _incompetence, _sabotaged our operation and resulted in the deaths of two innocent women. You will take the fall for this, _do you understand_?" He let go of him and turned away.

"What are you all standing there like morons for?" he snapped at his team, "We need that car dredged up, now!"

The men sprang into action, with a shell-shocked, pale-faced Mochizuki snapped out of his trance and hastened to join them. As he passed Nakagawa, the brutish man gave him a sneer, which could only mean one thing_. 'You'd better pray they're not dead.'_

In all the chaos and yelling, taking place on the bridge, the melee of police officers completely missed the half-drowned woman and bloodied man burst out of the water about five hundred metres downstream of them.

* * *

After what seemed like an age the dripping pair crawled from the midnight water, and collapsed onto the sludgy bank, looking like a couple of oozing monsters from a horror movie. They slumped onto their sides, uncaring about the slimy mud, they lay in and for a moment nothing was said as they coughed up water and gasped for air.

"Are we dead?" Shiori rasped, surprisingly calmly, her voice sounding slightly surreal, as though hypnotised or dreaming. She took in her surroundings, the sore gash on her forehead and the chill of icy water saturating her clothes felt real enough, "No, I guess not," she answered her own question, before turning to Matt, eyes widening, "Why not?" In truth, she had been sure that she was about to die.

Matt, also slightly shell shocked, opened his mouth to reply but then faltered as her tried to think of an answer.

He was fading. It had been the end of the line for him. As Matt had reached out to his mother, he had been stunned when he felt, not her warm gentle fingers gripping his own, but the fresh air as his hand broke through the surface of the water and a magnetic, inexplicable force pulling him upwards.

"I think somebody up there likes us." Matt's own words surprised him, given that he had never considered himself a particularly spiritual guy; quite the opposite, in fact. After losing his mother, his whole life, at such a young age, his heart had hardened to cynicism, which often came across in his dry sense of humour. Life after death, God, angels... they were a joke to him, much to Mello's annoyance. But now...now he didn't know what to think. There was any number of things that could have caused a hallucination: blood loss...oxygen deprivation...brain tumour, but those things didn't have any physical power. They couldn't pull you from the vicelike grip of a current. And his mother's gentle voice, her soft, comforting presence...everything had seemed so real.

Shiori spoke again, more aware, "You're telling me _you've _got a guardian angel?" She chuckled feebly, but began eying him warily.

The concept did seem fairly ridiculous and Matt's mouth twitched in his trademark smirk. _Guardian angel...yeah right_. However, he didn't get the chance to respond. His head tilted slightly, cocking his ear towards a familiar thrumming noise that had filled the air, and was growing louder and more intense every second. His eyes widened as her recognised it from the echo of past car chases. _Helicopter._

Matt jerked to his feet, pulling Shiori up beside him. "C'mon," she tripped, dazed by the rush of blood to her head, and looked at him, confused and fearful. "We have to get out of the open!" They darted for a strip of hedgerow, twenty feet from the riverbank. "We only have a moment before-" They forced themselves into the greenery, scraping twigs and thorns against the exposed skin of their faces and arms moments before a brilliant, glaring searchlight pierced the night sky, passing them narrowly as it scanned the bank they'd been slumped on moments before.

"They're looking for us." Matt stated, glancing down at the girl he held tight to his side, trying to shield both of them from the beacons, slicing the darkness and did a double take. She was filthy; half of her body was coated with dark mud from the river bank, and her clothes clung to her like a second skin, saturated by dirty, polluted city river water. Her hair was a wet, tangled mess around her face, which was marred by thin trail of blood from a small laceration on her forehead. Also, she was shivering. He instantly felt a pang of guilt.

_I could let her go_, he realised, _I could tell her to walk away now, go to the rendezvous point and that would be that._ But even as his common sense told him to push her away, his heart made him clutch her tighter.

_Not yet_, a voice in the back of his head told him, _not yet_.

The helicopter moved away but Matt was sure there would be more to follow and it wouldn't take the cops long to notice the disturbed mud of the riverbank, churned as the scrambled out of the water. If they could get to the rendezvous point, they'd be okay. He was badly injured, he knew, and Mello would know what to do. Mello always knew what to do.

Orientating himself, Matt visualised on the map where he and Mello had arranged to meet. It wasn't that far, he could even see the faint silhouette of the square, dull buildings about half a mile to his east.

"Let's go." He started walking, arm wrapped tight around Shiori's shuddering form.

She resisted a little, hesitating, "Where are you taking me?" Her tone was apprehensive.

"I can't tell you that," he told her, careful not to disclose too much, "But I can tell you when we get there, there'll be a towel and a change of clothes," He grinned and then looked down into her scared eyes, "Trust me. I'm not gonna hurt you...just trust me."

Shiori stopped pulling against him and walked silently, perplexed by her kidnapper's actions and trying, desperately to think of some way out of this crazy situation.

* * *

From the outside, the warehouse looked just like any other old, abandoned building, and really, it was. The building had been originally used to store mattresses for a large furniture company, which had gone belly up a long time ago and since then, had been empty of everything except a few remaining mattresses and the various rodents and pigeons, which lived there.

However, about a week ago, its quiet, peaceful existence had been torn to shreds when a leather-clad diva, and his equally bizarrely dresses accomplice had busted open the rusted lock and transformed the dusty construction from an abandoned warehouse to a top secret hide-out. The Batcave.

The creation of the "spy-lair," as Matt had jokingly referred to it, involved installing an absurdly high-tech computer system (at Matt's insistence), plus enough chocolate to feed a small army for at least a month (at Mello's), setting up a makeshift camp, and dragging a few cardboard boxes, containing basic supplies into the night watchman's office.

_About a week earlier:_

"_Is this everything we own, Mel? Anyone would think we were a moving company, with all this junk!" Matt had verbally attacked Mello's myriad of boxes of clothes, food and other basic 'essentials,' rolling his eyes and sighing dramatically at the overzealous packing. _

_Mello was quick to defend them. "Everything in here is a hundred percent necessary! You never know when you're going to need..."He rummaged in the nearest cardboard box and pulled out the first thing his fingers touched; "A..._menorah_?"_

_For a second Matt stood, arms folded and eyebrows raised condescendingly, staring at Mello, who held the Jewish candle holder up like a trophy, before both men collapsed into to helpless fits of laughter at the randomness of Mello's poor choice of example._

"_A Menorah, Mel?" Matt gasped out, tears streaming down his face, "It's _January!_ And you're a Catholic!" He mocked sarcastically, "Well done, my friend! When this whole thing is over, and were holed up in here, waiting for the heat to die down, I'm gonna be _so_ glad one of us showed the foresight to bring...Mello?" Mello had fallen silent suddenly, all previous traces of laughter evaporated from his scarred face. "What's wrong?"_

"_Nothing," Mello shook himself abruptly standing up with another box, "come on, let's get moving."_

_That was the first point Matt had begun to realise that Mello hadn't ever really thought he would survive to join his friend in the hideout. Everything in the boxes...it was all for Matt._

_End flashback_

The ancient door was all but welded shut with rust but, with the combined weight of both Shiori and Matt pressed against it, it eventually wrenched open with an eerie squeal. _This was a lot easier with Mello,_ Matt groaned internally. Only, when it was locked behind them did he let go of her arm and she instantly stepped away from him. All of the outgoingness and affability that she'd shown after nearly drowning, probably something to do with a mixture of shock, oxygen deprivation and a nasty bump to the head, had been replaced with a closed wariness. She stared at him, shrewdly, as if expecting him to suddenly come at her with a gun...again.

Matt glanced around. The thick coating of dust that covered everything, apart from the small pathway he and Mello had tracked through it on their last journey here, was undisturbed and the silence was deafening; nothing to show that anyone had been here since then...Mello hadn't made the rendezvous. Squaring his shoulders against the worry he felt for his friend, he pushed all dark thoughts to the back of his mind. _He'll be here. He'll be here. _He chanted to himself.

Shiori's chattering teeth pulled Matt from his thoughts and he turned to her, taking in her sodden and shivering appearance. "Oh right...there's a washroom through there," He gestured, "...with a shower, if you want to, uh, clean up." Her eyebrows rose and she looked at him with suspicion. "Oh no! I mean...I'm not a pervert or anything like that. Seriously! I'll just stay out here and-" He looked around for inspiration and his eyes landed on a box full of leather get-up, "-find us some clothes. You have nothing to worry about!" He stammered, running his fingers through his dripping dark hair, feeling very awkward.

Shiori stared into his eyes for five long heartbeats. Her parents had been over-protective so she was, naturally a little on the cautious side; _He could be a rapist or a murderer, just waiting till you're at your most vulnerable, _she could practically hear mother warning her...but she was so cold and filthy...and a shower was just what she needed. And besides, the eyes she was staring into looked warm and unthreatening and she could tell from white face and the slight trembling of his hands that he'd lost too much blood to be any threat.

_Whatever_, she decided eventually, _I've had gun held to my head and escaped from an underwater car wreck today...how risky can a shower be?_ She narrowed her eyes and spun on her heel, marching in the direction he was pointing before she could change her mind, trying not to give away how had her heart was hammering against her ribcage.

"If you even _think_ about trying _anything_," her voice rang out with a confidence that was completely unlike her, "Remember this – _I know Karate!"_ He didn't need to know that she'd only ever gone to one class, two years ago, with a friend and had sprained her ankle so badly, tripping over her own feet, she'd never gone back.

Matt watched Shiori stalk away from him, eyes following her dirty, wet figure until the door of the office shut behind her. He smirked. I think that might just be the prettiest thing I've ever seen, he thought to himself.

* * *

A/N - Um...sorry? I haven't really got an excuse for the delay, other than I got really kind of bored with this story and totally lost my inspiration. However, now I'm back and better than ever! This chapter has been brewing for many months so please let me know what you think...or yell at me for abandoning it for so long. Nothing motivates me to write a new chapter quite like hearing what people thought of my last one!

On a similar note, before writing the next chapter, I may take some time to sort out the previous one's punctuation, grammar, paragraphing...depends on feed back. So don't worry if there no updates for a while. I'm working on it!

Finally, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Have a good one!

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	18. An Irritating Savior

A/N – Hey, remember me! Sorry about the temporary abandonment. I have been very busy with some important exams over the last 6 months. Just a heads up, I do intend to bring this story to a close soon-ish; hopefully within the next ten chapters. Well, enjoy!

* * *

_Recap:_

"_Mr Gevanni? What's happened?"_

"_...I'm sorry, Near...I couldn't do it." Near's storm coloured eyes widened in surprise. "I-I have my family to think of! If I were gone, then my mother-"_

_"__That's enough Mr Gevanni."..."__This requires someone completely committed to bringing down Kira, with the mental capacity to see the bigger picture. I'd go myself if my survival weren't so important to the case. But who...?"_

* * *

_Finally, Mello made his decision. "For now, we're stuck together. If you do exactly as I say, you can help."_

* * *

_"Good to see you again, Mello," the man spoke with a broad American accent, a gentler version of the booming orders from the megaphone. "I guess I'll introduce myself again for Miss Sato's benefit. How d'you do, Miss?" He offered a weathered hand to help her up. "M' names Anthony Rester of the SPK."_

* * *

An Irritating Saviour

Mello leaned back against the helicopter wall, eyes darting around and taking in the surroundings. He'd never been very good at keeping his emotions down, and the knowledge that Near was behind the timely rescue, which had almost certainly saved his life, aggravated him more than he would admit. His stiff posture and cold glower spoke volumes. Rester had chivalrously provided a long coat, that fitted Haruka badly, but was a long sight better than the blanket he's provided her with in the van along with an explanation of the situation that had been brief and not very helpful in building up a picture of what was going on,. But Mello allowed himself to take a little pleasure in breaking down the assessment in a sharp mocking tone.

"So, what you're saying is that Near and the SPK are too _afraid _to get their hands dirty by touching the notebook themselves and so he wants me to do it for him. Is that it?" He smirked as the helicopter soared away from the abandoned truck, back towards the city.

"You can look at it that way, if you want Mello." Rester kept a poker face, "Near will explain the rest of your duties to you when we get back to headquarters. Now Gevanni has continued to follow Mikami's movement for the time being, but we have still been unable to-"

"My _duties?_ " Mello interrupted harshly, jerking forward, the savage intensity of his gaze causing Rester and Haruka to lean back. "I haven't agreed to anything yet, Rester! I've said it before and I'll say it again. Near and I don't work well together." His irritation at Near's superiority broke through, seething that his rival would try to command him."

Taken aback by Mello's unstable mood swings and confused by the soothing hand Haruka Sato Placed on his arm. Rester leaned back. "It's up to you, I guess, Mello. But, when this helicopter lands, Near is going to be there, and I think he has a thing or two to say to you...and of course there is Miss Sato's predicament to think of..."

Mello sourly resigned himself to yet another bitter face-off with Near. As much as he hated to admit it, he was indebted to his rival for his timely rescue. Although he was sure his motives were not entirely unselfish, he would suffer the meeting...not that he had much choice, he sourly conceded.

* * *

As the Helicopter made its descent onto the concealed rooftop of the SPK headquarters, Near pondered the imminent arrival of the nemesis, who he had last seen pointing a handgun at his head. Mello was highly unpredictable and liable to try whatever trick he could to spite Near, but, it was clear by this point that the Kira case had a hold on both of them in a way that he had never seen before.

"I honestly never thought I'd see the day..." Near muttered to himself, wryly, "...a case that's so important that Mello would work beside me instead of against me."

"He still might not agree," Giovanni interjected, pacing the room, "Despite what you think, Near. You can't just walk up to a notebook and place yourself in the hands of a Shinigami and a lunatic, easy as that. I couldn't-"

"Oh be quiet Giovanni, you _couldn't_ nothing. It is a perfectly feasible task that you were given. Pick up the notebook. You simply wouldn't." Near coldly stated.

"And Mello would?"

"Yes. He would. Mello has no family to think of, no home or anything holding him here. _He_ also has a backbone." At this point Near paused to scrutinise the subject of his contempt. "And I know he will see this case through to the end."

Some metres above them, the helicopter blades stopped whirring.

* * *

"In here Mello." Rester stopped beside a non-descript door. "Near wants to speak with you. Miss Sato, please come with me."

Haruka frowned. "I think I should go too. I don't want to-"

"No. Stay with Rester." Came Mello's clipped statement, his voice chillt.

Haruka's forehead wrinkled in consternation. "But you said I could help with the Kira case! If this meeting between you and Near is relevant to the Kira case then it it's also relevant to me. Don't forget about my brother!"

"And you will," Mello conceded, lowering his voice and speaking urgently to her, taking note the slightly raised eyebrow on Rester's face. That was bad. If the SPK found out how involved Haruka was with the case, how much she knew, it wouldn't lead to anything good. Her freedom could be compromised. Besides, if his past interactions with his opponent were any reflection of what was waiting for Mello behind those doors, things could get heated. After all, the last time he'd come face to face with Near, he'd nearly lost his temper with a gun in his hand and, after the night he'd just had; sleepless, stressful and quite possibly having lost his one friend, the situation could quite easily get out of his control.

"Go with Rester now so that I can ascertain what it is Near wants from me. This time is very important for the case and the sooner I can get him out of my hair, the sooner we can get out of here and get on with catching Kira."

Even as he was speaking, the scowl appearing on Haruka's face got darker, her lips turned down and her eyes narrowed. "I'm _going _with you." She declared, flatly. "You told me that you would let me help you fight Kira and I won't be dismissed."

Throughout the conversation Rester realised that the situation, particularly with regard to Mello's relationship with the girl he had kidnapped only hours before, had developed to an unexpected level, leaving him unsure of what to do. He chose this moment to interject, "I think Miss Sato had better go in with you Mello. I have a feeling Near will want to meet you, ma'am." This, he decided was the best path to take. Near would know what to do.

Mello weighed up the situation he was faced with in a split second, he wasn't happy with the way things were going. But he could tell from the look on Rester's face that Haruka had sparked his curiosity, effectively slamming the door on any chances he'd had of quietly uninvolving her from the dangerous mess they were in. The best thing he could do, for now, was keep her close.

"Fine," he ground out from between clenched teeth, "Just let me do the talking." Then he turned on his heel and strode towards the door his frustration evident in the way his heavy black boots clomped against the shiny lino, Haruka half a pace behind him.

* * *

Computer and TV screens filled the walls of the room like some cluttered art gallery, the screens in use giving off an unnatural light, with dark patches of the wall showing in between. It was clearly a work place; swivel chairs sat at a row of desks and empty coffee cups left rings on the table top. The only sound in the room was the hum of electricity coming from the many computers. If Haruka had expected anything it would have been some kind of eccentric underground lair, for the slightly unhinged detective she'd pictured as Mello's archenemy, who'd also dedicated himself to the Kira case. However, there was nothing unusual about the room itself, which was in itself so surprising that it took her a moment to notice, the puzzle pieces lying on the floor, lying in a jumbled trail to a small, unimposing figure, dressed all in white crouched in the middle of the disarray, facing away from them. Mello stiffened beside her, shifting slightly so as to place himself between her and the person.

"I see you brought a friend, Mello." A husky, apathetic voice came from the mouth of the child-like man. He turned, his puddle-coloured eyes boring into Haruka's and a hand came up to his face, twirling a strand of white hair around his bony fingers. "I think the two of you had better take a seat. I have a proposition for you."

* * *

A/N – Sorry again for the very long delay. Not that I'm holding my chapter's hostage in exchange for feedback, but they do help me get in a writing mood. Please spare one minute to tell me what you thought?


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